SAFETY/RISK/O&M | INSIGHT
FOCUS ON ACTIVE MANAGEMENT
Three themes among many at the 10th International Symposium of Tunnel Safety and Security (ISTSS), held in Norway last April, were focused on active management – of Safety, Emergency and Evacuation in underground transport. But while themes exist as do disciplines and specialisms, there was also a message of whole systems thinking – to appreciate and work with lies beyond your own discipline for the greater, safer, good
A host of themes were discussed at the most recent International Symposium of Tunnel Safety and Security (ISTSS) – the 10th
, held in Norway last year.
While technical aspects often get the spotlight, here this short review briefly looks at three key themes that deal with wider approaches to preparing for safely operating underground transport, both road and rail – including Emergency management (see below), and Evacuation, and Safety Management, respectively (see box panels). The Keynote presentations also covered a variety of
themes. One such topic among the Keynotes is an overarching
theme: the benefits from holistic systems. But, in the paper, the topic was discussed from the perspective of the origins of its opposite – fragmentation. Taking that as a beginning, the paper discussed research underway led by the University of Stavanger to do something about it.
FIGHTING FRAGMENTATION The cultivation of a wide spectrum of competencies, and different players working closer together in construction and operations spheres, are important steps to overcoming what is argued to be the fragmented nature of tunnel safety for underground transport, according to a keynote speaker at the 10th International Symposium of Tunnel Safety and Security (ISTSS), held. The argued picture of fragmentation arose from a
safety regime that is “contingent on the tunnel history, where tunnel safety emerged through events,” says the keynote paper by Prof Ove Njå, who specialises in risk and emergency management at the University of Stavanger. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of ISTSS. The safety approach has usually developed iteratively
and progressively over time, responding to different classes of problems and risk. The result, therefore, also fragments how well the different professionals involved with transport tunnels come to work together from their own disciplines, or don’t. This is a hazard in itself, according to the studies.
“There is no unifying discipline or education that
brings them together,” says Prof Njå in the paper. A strategy to overcome the fragmentation is to
have ‘tunnel safety competence’ as a key concept in safety management systems, he says. He adds that ‘competence’ is not addressed by regulations and that significant uncertainties exist over what is perceived to be ‘good’ in terms of tunnel safety. The keynote paper discusses research and the process
to obtain a ‘state of competence tool’, drawing upon a combination of learning and systems safety theories, respectively. This work has been undertaken through the ‘Tunnel Safety Study’ (TSS), led by the university in structured courses. The paper comments that, at an academic level, the
TSS looks at how “experiences become theory”, and how different groups in tunnel infrastructure and operations should gather and review data and knowledge. The TSS is organised in credit-earning learning/research modules for students. Part of the work involves cross- checking the stance of different disciplines in their risk perspectives, and of planners and users too. The aim is to find an holistic approach, a theory, founded upon real-world, broad inputs based on practical lessons and experiences from the different disciplines. The research challenges the issue of tunnel safety
competence, moving appreciation of it to be seen as more than, simply, the absence of unwanted events but how its complex parts and parties function and are experienced, and the resulting outcomes. Competence in transport tunnel safety, then, is argued to be a topic that calls for far-reaching appreciation of hard and soft systems creating a whole context and environment. Further, safety is more than the responses of and to some niche, functional parts of an underground asset. In the era of digitalisation drawing pieces of
infrastructure together more easily, in Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Digital Twins (DT), the possibilities of greater benefit coming from the whole being more than the sum of the parts should be easier to engage with. The challenge even then, though, is handling the non-engineered elements, and adding
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