Road tunnel fire safety and risk: a review

Abstract

A review concerning road tunnel fire safety and risk is presented. In particular different perspectives and methods on safety and risk are discussed. Road tunnel fire safety usually involves high uncertainty and high-stakes decisions. Thus, a wider group of stakeholders and different types of knowledge should be included in the fire safety analysis and evaluation, than what is required by technical risk analyses. It is argued that the decision process should not be separated from the design and safety evaluation as they are strongly dependent and iterative processes. Decision theory can guide the design and decision process in negotiation with stakeholders. Key parameters for the decision can be analysed through a combination of functional requirements, societal and political values, safety engineering, safety factors and systems theory. By taking an organisational viewpoint, potential latent and active errors can be analysed and a good safety culture can be engineered. In order to improve the safety culture of truck companies, regulation ensuring proper maintenance, training and quality management may be necessary in a competitive global economy.

Assessment of the Effectiveness of Different Safety Measures at Tunnel Lay-Bys and Portals to Protect Occupants in Passenger Cars

“…Due to fire catastrophes in tunnels [18][19][20] caused by vehicle crashes [21] much attention was paid to fire accidents. Even though fire crashes are less frequent than traffic accidents the potential for a catastrophe is much higher in these cases [5,20,[22][23][24][25][26][27]. Furthermore the geometry of tunnel lay-bys and tunnel portals received attention [18].…”

Development and Application of Fire Video Image Detection Technology in China’s Road Tunnels

“…However, when heavy goods vehicles or buses with the HRR of 20-30 MW or higher are involved, the consequence of the fire accidents in tunnels are very severe. Once the incident has occurred, the fire developed and spread very quickly in the tunnel, even led to explosions of delivered goods in some accidents [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. The fire incidents also produced large amounts of hot and toxic smokes.…”

Study of fire behavior and evacuation in tunnel by simulation

“…But the rarely occurring larger res can lead to both loss of life and property as well as it can lead to long tunnel closure and expensive repair costs. The level of uncertainty in estimating probabilities and modelling of re and consequences is considerable [5].…”