Diapositiva 1

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INFORMATION SOCIETY TECHNOLOGIES (IST) PROGRAMME
Contract for Shared-cost RTD Project
acronym SAFE TUNNEL Project full title
Innovative systems and frameworks for enhancing
of traffic safety in road tunnels Proposal/Co
ntract no. IST 2000 28099 Operative
commencement date of contract 01/09/2001
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Project abstract

• SAFE TUNNEL main objective is to contribute to
  reduce the number of accidents inside road
  tunnels by preventive safety measures. Main focus
  is to achieve a dramatic decrease of the fire
  accidents which, although rare, are the most
  serious safety risk inside tunnel and in
  particular inside mono-tube Alpine Tunnel as the
  Frejus Tunnel.
• Basic ideas are to increase the knowledge of the
  vehicle status in order to avoid the access into
  the tunnel to those vehicles with detected or
  imminent on-board anomalies and to introduce
  measures to achieve the control of the speed and
  the distance between the vehicles in tunnel.
• Work specific objectives include
• Development of two demonstrator trucks equipped
  with preventive diagnosis devices, tele control
  and HMI facilities
• Development of the control centre to manage SAFE
  TUNNEL applications
• Analysis of the needs of tunnel operators for
  managing safety related operations with
  electronic devices
• Analysis of driver needs for on-board Human
  Machine Interface
• Transmission of data in the Frejus area (tunnel
  comprised) by a public telecom network (GSM/UMTS)
• Demonstrations of SAFE TUNNEL concept by field
  tests at Frejus Tunnel
• Evaluation activities include Technical Impact
  analysis, User Acceptance estimation,
  Socio-Economic impact estimation Cost Benefit
  analysis
• Recommendations for Standardisation bodies

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Project Objectives
SAFE TUNNEL main objective is to contribute to
reduce the overall number of accident inside road
tunnels through preventive safety measures. From
a recent study (1999) of PIARC (Permanent
International Association of Road Congresses) ,
the average frequency of fires in tunnels is
higher than 25 per 100 million vehicle kilometres
(number of vehicles km), while for a group of
tunnel (e.g. Frejus, Mont Blanc and Gotthard)
this frequency is much higher, especially of
fires involving HGV and greater than that of
passenger cars. Concerning Frejus Tunnel, in the
year 2000 happened 482 incidents of which 281
were due to mechanic failures, 82 were caused by
fuel tanks empty, 23 involved property damage
only accidents , 1 was a collision involving 1
injured person, 34 were fire incidents and 47
were incidents which had other or unknown
causes. In measurable terms, the objective of
the project is to introduce measures capable of
introducing in the Frejus tunnel a reduction of
the number of HGV incidents of the 40 within 10
years and a cut of the 50 the frequency of fires
in tunnels within 6 years. . To achieve this
objective, SAFE TUNNEL aims to enhance safety
inside road tunnels through the introduction of a
set of preventive safety measures made possible
by the integration of on board vehicle devices
and ITS infrastructures.
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This integration vehicle-infrastructure shall be
achieved at three levels SAFE TUNNEL shall
develop or adapt existing on board vehicle
sensors to monitor main vehicle functions in
order to forecast and detect anomalies to on
board devices. This information will be
transmitted to the control centre managed by
tunnel operator through a public
telecommunication network. SAFE TUNNEL shall
develop a control centre to receive and to
process the information transmitted by equipped
HGV and by infrastructure-based electronic system
(when the vehicles are not equipped). The
objective is to determine a strategy to prevent
unsafe situations inside the tunnel both for
equipped and not equipped vehicles. The
preventive actions enabled by the control centre
consist of the access control at the entry point
and the control of the vehicle speed together
with enforcement measures. SAFE TUNNEL shall
develop the tele-control of the equipped
vehicle by the automatic actuation on board
vehicle of the speed recommended by the control
centre and transmitted to the vehicle and shall
study the possibility to install inside the
tunnel an infrastructured system capable of
showing a light beam which drivers of not
equipped vehicles must follow (The moving spot
light concept)
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SAFE TUNNEL plans to carry out the following
activities Vehicle level Development of two
demonstrator vehicles to be provided by Renault
and by IVECO. Main functions of demonstrator
vehicles are - Implementation of a diagnostic
system for checking the proper functionality of
main mechanical (engine, brakes, power train,
transmission, Tires) and electronic devices
(Advance Cruise Control, ABD ESP, communication
system) and capable of forecasting vehicle
failure well in advance. - Implementation/adaptat
ion of a system to control automatically the
speed of the vehicle acting on the brake and the
acceleration systems. Infrastructure
level Development of a control centre which shall
integrate as input the diagnostic data
transmitted by the vehicles and the alarms
provided by existing (not funded) ITS systems
which are - alarms of the Automatic Incident
Detection System (AIDS)- alarms of the thermal
check system- alarms of the ventilation
system.The control centre will be installed in
the control room of the Frejus Tunnel operators
(SITAF and SFTRF) where today is operating the
surveillance system ( equipped with fixed video
camera every 200 meters in both directions). As
output SAFE TUNNEL shall provide the recommended
speed for the tele-control application, shall
activate the access control measures to stop the
potentially dangerous vehicles, shall alert the
emergency services in case of potential danger
detected by the sensors inside the tunnel and
shall issue warning messages to the drivers
on-board vehicle.
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• Communication Level
• The communications between vehicles and
  infrastructures shall be achieved by a public
  communication network, the two demonstrator
  vehicles and the control centre will be equipped
  with RX/TX devices. The Frejus Tunnel operators
  are working with both French and Italian mobile
  telecom operators to provide GSM coverage which
  is planned to be provided by the end of 2002.
  Since Telecom Operators plan to start commercial
  service with UMTS (Universal Mobile
  Telecommunications System) in January 2002, also
  UMTS has to be considered as communication
  technology. The choice of a public network rather
  than a private network comes from the
  consideration that in most of EU Member States
  mobile phone penetration increases very rapidly,
  it is likely that in the next few years the
  cellular link will be present almost in every
  vehicle passing through the road tunnel.
• Opportunity and objective reasons suggested to
  limit the development phase to the field of
  commercial vehicles these reasons are mainly
  three
• Higher potential danger of commercial vehicles
  (from studies of PIARC the Fire intensity and the
  Fire capacity of a HGV is much higher, from 10 to
  30 times, to a passenger car)
• Today the commercial vehicles represent the
  biggest share of transit traffic via Frejus
  Tunnel (In 1999 were 1.5 millions of trucks and
  1.1 millions of passenger cars)
• Budget and time limitations.
• Nevertheless SAFE TUNNEL will not neglect other
  vehicles. User needs and system concept will also
  take into account the needs of passenger cars.

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Conclusions
The activities planned are aiming to demonstrate
in a real test site the full feasibility of the
cooperative approach proposed. A key of success
of SAFE TUNNEL is to understand if the so called
Intelligent Tunnel concept which has been
pursued by SITAF and SFTRF takes a tangible value
added when cooperating with an Intelligent
Vehicle. The presence of layered information
subsystems, located at vehicle, infrastructure,
control centre levels and interconnected together
by a telecommunication system (such as UMTS),
increases benefits, but on the other side
increase the overall system complexity and
vulnerability to hardware and software failures.
The availability of safety functions and services
of the overall system will be characterised and
measured to prevent its vulnerability through
appropriate technical analyses originating from
high tech sectors. The analysis will be more
concentrated on the complexity of the
interconnection and composition of subsystems and
on the impact of design errors in delivering the
system safety functions. Finally the industrial,
research and management capabilities present
within the consortium will be integrated by the
opinions of a user interest group (both operators
and end users) of the road tunnel. This interest
group together with additional participants will
be involved in a virtual forum called SAFETY
INSIDE TUNNEL managed by SITAF and SFTRF. From
an operative point of view this forum will
consist of a web site which shall contains
information concerning tunnel safety and tunnel
management together with the main results
published by the project. The participation to
the forum will be open to other relevant
organizations in charge of safety and tunnel
management, invited by SITAF and SFTRF.
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