The European economy relies heavily upon a sustainable transportation system, in which tunnels are a key element. The safety systems in a significant part of the existing tunnels were designed on the basis of traffic and its estimated growth of two or more decades ago. It appears that traffic has grown more significantly and also changed in composition (more combustible and flammable goods). Consequently the safety level in existing tunnels has decreased in cases where no intermediate measures were taken to cope with the changed composition of traffic. This holds throughout Europe, for road-, rail- and mass-transit tunnels. In response to a request by the European Commission, a total of 41 tunnel experts in Europe have set up a 13 million Euro R&D project, called UPTUN, which is co-sponsored by the European Commission. The main objects are listed as follows: (ⅰ) Development of innovative detection and monitoring means, as well as, mitigating measures, influencing human response and saving lives, and for the protection against structural damage, (ⅱ) Development, demonstration and promotion of procedures for rational safety level evaluation, including decision support models; and knowledge transfer. In this paper the main features of the project, started in September 2002 are highlighted.
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