Quantitative risk analysis for road tunnels complying with EU regulations

Konstantinos A. Kirytopoulos, Athanasios A. Rentizelas, Ilias P. Tatsiopoulos and George Papadopoulos

Journal of Risk Research, 2010, vol. 13, issue 8, 1027-1041

Abstract: Tunnels have improved the connection of regions within the European Commission (EC) and have been used lately as a catalyst for economic development of previously isolated regions. However, the increasing number of these important infrastructures is raising upfront an endogenous problem, which is the severity of accidents that may occur. These risks have much greater impact when heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) or dangerous goods (DGs) are involved in the accident. As a result, the EC launched the EC Directive 2004/54/EC. In order to achieve a minimum acceptable level of safety, the EC Directive 2004/54/EC suggests, apart from the measures imposed based on tunnel characteristics, the implementation of a risk analysis in cases such as the opening of the road tunnel to DGs. The most widely accepted method for such quantitative risk analysis (QRA) is the OECD/PIARC QRA Model. This research exploits the QRA Model to perform a QRA for five illustrative cases in order to explore the sufficiency of the minimum tunnel safety measures imposed by the Directive when transportation of HGVs and DGs is allowed through the tunnel. The research concludes that, at least for tunnels with marginal values of the EC Directive classes for length and traffic, the risk exposure ( F / N curves) lays over the acceptable safety limits of ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable) models. Thus, the manager of the tunnel should take seriously into account the provision of the Directive for further risk analysis and consider more safety measures as well as take into account the risk associated with the alternative routes.

Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2010.494331 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:13:y:2010:i:8:p:1027-1041

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2010.494331

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().