ODOS - Holistic Management of resources and emergencies on motorways and Road Tunnels through an Integrated Intelligent Technology System

Project category: Research

Contractor: National Technical University of Athens

Scientific Responsible: A/Prof. Konstantinos Kirytopoulos

Main Researcher: A/Prof. Konstantinos Kirytopoulos

Project held for: Consortium of companies under EYDE-ETAK funding

Years held: 2019-2022

Funding: 628.000€

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A few words about the project:

Road transport has the largest share in freight and passenger traffic among the other categories of transportation. In order to achieve further development and quality of operation, increased safety is a prerequisite. In particular, the safety of road tunnels is a major issue as tunnels are a major part of road infrastructure, which has particularly high demands on capital and human resources. The improvement of the construction technology over the past two decades has further enhanced the contribution of tunnels as an economically viable solution to the development of new road networks. This fact is also reflected in the Greek area as the construction of the new road axes (AIGAIOU, EGNATIA ODOS, MOREAS, IONIA ODOS, OLYMPIA ODOS) made Greece the fourth country in the European Union for absolute number of tunnels over 500 meters long. However, the use of road tunnels, although contributing significantly to economic development, it also has a particularly important intrinsic hazard in terms of the severity of accidents likely to occur within them, such as incidents including fire. When such accidents occur due to the closed environment of the tunnels, highly adverse effects can be caused, in particular with regard to human casualties and disasters in the equipment and tunnel infrastructure. Thus, road tunnels are nowadays confronted as complex social-technical systems. In order to increase the safety of tunnels during the operational phase, the present research proposal suggests a new innovative holistic system for the management of emergency situations in road tunnels through sophisticated technological and man-centered methods. Emergency situations may include the occurrence of a fire within the tunnel, the presence of a high level of monoxide and other toxic gases, the release / leakage of flammable volatile liquids / gases on the carriageway or generally the interior of the tunnel, etc. In order to increase the safety of tunnels during their operation, the proposed holistic emergency management system, together with the intelligent management tools that accompany it, achieve the following key objectives: (a) developing a holistic system for managing contingency situations Occur in the tunnel system. Taking into account the nature of the accidents (mainly fire), the equipment available, the behavior of the users and the actions of the control center operators and in general the operating staff. (b) information / training of operators of tunnel traffic control centers having the first and central role in incident management; (c) thorough examination of the fire within the tunnel as the most critical emergency situation in a tunnel; (e) developing an intelligent communications system to deal effectively with emergencies. With the development and integration of intelligent services, the proposed system will be one of the first most integrated systems to offer, through an interactive assistant to the operator of the business center, the appropriate response protocols and resource management methods in emergencies, while interacting with Human-robot chat in the mobile phone application will enable the relevant staff with voice or written questions to be informed of their evolution.

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