Supporting decision-making processes for selecting fire safety measures for road tunnels

Abstract

Selecting fires safety measures for road tunnels relies mainly on strict regulatory requirements. However, the choice should also be based on many different criteria and ranking of alternatives should take place. Existing methods exhibit lack in dealing rigorously with measures' selection amongst different alternatives. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by proposing a novel method, named EVADE, which aims to incorporate diverse stakeholders' views and provide a meaningful ranking of alternatives. To do so, it estimates the tunnel level of safety taking into account only any standard measures existing. Subsequently, the performance of additional measures is examined. Then, a list of the most significant criteria that are valuable to judge the appropriateness of selected measures is introduced. The relative importance amongst the decision criteria is calculated through the Analytic Hierarchy Process, based on the expert opinion. Sensitivity analysis through Monte Carlo simulation is embedded to allow for a meaningful prioritization of the decision criteria. Thus, the alternatives’ ranking comes as a distribution instead of a single number, providing the decision-maker richer information for selecting the most suitable measure(s) according to the specific tunnel situation. At last, a typical tunnel is examined to showcase the utilization of the method. • Transportation management especially concerns about road tunnels' fire safety. • Problems that emerge during measures' selection are identified and discussed. • A list of the most valuable criteria to judge selected measures is introduced. • Diverse stakeholders' views are incorporated. • A new method for prioritizing investments to enhance tunnel safety is proposed.