Today tunnels are the essential parts of major highways and travel through tunnels has to be made to make them as safe and as comfortable as possible.
Even smallest of the accident in tunnel can cause great material damage and disastrous consequences to its participants. Consequences can be catastrophic and sometimes even worse, it can bring to the loss of human lives. For all these reasons, the highest possible level of travelers’ safety must be insured at all the times.
Ever since long tunnels have been built, they have been equipped with basic life support systems like power distribution, ventilation and lighting. However today, with ever increasing traffic density through tunnels, these are not sufficient and additional systems necessary to improve safety and travelers comfort are being included in order to raise travelers' safety and comfort of travel to a satisfactory level.
Quality, reliability, and technical specifications of each element or subsystem are the main focus of any tunnel safety analysis.
The following systems are usually installed in tunnels over few hundred meters long:
- Electric power supply , power distribution and back-up power systems
- Ventilation systems
- Lighting systems
- Systems for measurement and control of air quality
- Fire detection and fire alarm systems
- Video surveillance and automatic incident detection systems.
- Traffic control and management systems including variable signalization and traffic detection/counting
- Emergency telephone system
- water supply and automatic sprinkling systems
- Public Announcement (PA) systems
- Rebroadcasting systems for radio and cellular services
- Data communication network
These systems can be divided in two functional layers:
- systems, equipment and control devices installed in the tunnel
- Central control and management systems installed in Operations management center (OMC)
These two layers are connected via common data communication network..
In order to achieve required simplicity of system management and control to keep operator focused, it is important to insure that the complete interaction between the system and operator is achieved at single point through a single user interface. This is the essence of ergonomic integration which can only be achieved through adequate hardware and software.
topXview™ was developed with the goal to satisfy the stated "Complete Integration". It is capable of the following:
- direct control of all implemented subsystems
- integration of video system within the graphical user interface
- interactive guidance in critical situations
- logging, recording and analysis of all system events
- automation of all alert processes and forwarding all important information, data and messages to the appropriate emergency services (i.e. fire department, emergency medical services, etc.)
- simulation and training of all participants in the process
To provide safe and comfortable passage of travelers through the tunnels it is necessary to equip them with modern and reliable equipment integrated in a manner which will allow well trained team of people to efficiently and optimally manage all processes in the tunnel. Such complete integration provides for the maximal utilization of the applied technology and secures the maximum safety for the tunnel users.
