Tunnel fire safety management and systems thinking: Adapting engineering practice through regulations and education

Society is changing ever faster, and tunnels are complex systems where performance is affected by many different stakeholders. This suggests that safety management needs to be proactive and based on a systems perspective that acknowledges socio-technical systems theories. Although systems thinking principles are foundational in overarching goals and European regulation, system principles are generally not affecting tunnel fire safety design principles or engineering practice. In the countries investigated in this study, tunnel fire safety management (TFSM) builds on experience-based and risk management-based principles that optimize independently system by system. This is usually done with limited consideration of how these systems are interconnected and affect the overall tunnel system. The purpose of this paper is to investigate rules and engineering practice against the assumption that systems thinking could support existing engineering practice. The work presented in this article is the outcome of a collaboration between fire safety researchers and practitioners from five different countries and three different continents. Through three workshops, current TFSM have been compiled and discussed. To improve the situation, the authors suggest to re-design tunnel safety regulations and to strengthen engineers’ ability to work in design teams using systems thinking principles.

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