Geneva June 2013

The ITA COSUF Workshop on Complex Underground Multipurpose Facilities: Safety Challenges and Solutions was organised by ITA COSUF as part of the ITA-AITES World Tunnel Congress 2013 at the Centre International de Conférences in Geneva.

The meeting room was a lecture theatre of an impressive size at the hearth of the building. After a warm welcome on behalf of ITA COSUF chairman Didier Lacroix two key note lectures followed. Both lectures were focussed on new areas of interest for the COSUF community. The first one was on operational safe-ty in the underground facilities of a deep geological dis-posal of nuclear waste by Denis De Winter. In this lecture two apparently divergent approaches for safety analysis were addressed. Fire barriers and confinement to pre-vent contamination by dangerous products on the one hand, and smoke extraction to allow evacuation of per-sons and action of firemen in the excavations deep under the ground on the other hand. Then the second key-note lecture on safety of CERN’s underground research complex was presented by Fabio Corsanego. In this lecture the control of cryogenic spill and fire caused by a lay-out of kilometers of cable was outlined.

In the afternoon good examples of general fire safety strategies of complex underground multipurpose facili-ties were demonstrated. Bo Wahlström presented the Slussen project in Stockholm where metros lines, à commuters train, an end station and a road tunnel meet bus garages and shopping centres. And then Bernard Falconnat showed PIARC’s first results on complex underground road networks. Götz Vollmann promoted a holistic approach for assessing the need for and the efficiency of specific measures of a multipurpose facility. A safe design or a systemic upgrade will enable transparent and traceable decisions. Niels Peter Høj and Matthias Schubert showed the benefits of RAMS analyses of complex technical systems in underground facilities; a more robust system design (maximize availability) and more safety for users. The theme of the last session was dealing with numerous people underground. Marco Bettelini underlined the importance of combining emergency management concepts with innovative Information and communication technology. Hereto the results of the EMILI project (Emergency Management in Large Infrastructures) were presented. Max Kinateder presented field and virtual reality studies on human behaviour in severe tunnel acci-dents. He concluded that virtual reality behavioural training may improve tunnel evacuation and noticed that social Influence may have both positive and negative effects in the evacuation process. Finally, results from the METRO project on fire safety in metro trains and stations were presented by Daniel Nilsson. Between the sessions, there was lively discussion by all participants.

At the end of the Workshop ITA COSUF Chairman handed over the ITA COSUF Award 2013. The award consists of a medal, a certificate and prize money and is granted once a year to a young re-searcher who has contributed in consid-erable manner to the development of the safety of underground facilities. This year, the award was handed over to Enricho Ronchi for his contribution in the area of Evacuation Modelling in Road Tunnel Fires combining various evacuation mod-els to increase the reliability of predic-tions regarding human behaviour, vali-dated by tests. We congratulate Enricho for his exceptional work.