Fire hazards in tunnels and underground installations

Fire accidents in tunnels and underground installations have resulted in significant loss in terms of life and costs. Several large research projects are launched in Europe to find cost effective ways to upgrade and make such installation more robust against accidents from fires and explosions. For one single tunnel, severe fire accidents are rare and operators and users will have very limit experience, when they do occur. There is a trend to solve the problem with high tech instrumentation and monitoring techniques and to rely on the fire brigade to play a major role in the rescue operation. These precautionary measures are very difficult to validate for the severe fires. For protection against the most critical fires, the safety has to be considered in the design of the tunnel and the technical installation validated so that it operates as indented.