Performance-based design of road tunnel fire safety: Proposalof new Swedish framework

This paper contains a proposal of new Swedish framework for performance-based design ofroad tunnel fire safety derived from Swedish and European regulation. The overall purposeof the guideline is to protect life, health, property, environment, and key societal functionsfrom fire. The guideline is structured into five key groups of requirements: #1 Proper managementand organisation, #2 to limit the generation and spread of fire and smoke, #3 toprovide means for safe self-evacuation, #4 to provide means and safety for the rescue service,and #5 to ensure load-bearing capacity of the construction. Each group contains ahybrid of prescriptive requirements, performance-based requirements, and acceptablesolutions. Prescriptive requirements must be fulfilled, however, it is the choice of thedesign team to either adopt the proposed acceptable solutions, or to design alternativesolutions by verifying that performance-based requirements are satisfied. For verificationof performance-based requirements through risk analysis the operational, epistemic, andaleatory uncertainties are considerable. Therefore, a scenario-based risk analysis with severalspecified input variables and methods is recommended for verification of #3 and #5.Indispensable complements are scenario exercises, emergency exercises and similar methodsthat validate the design and highlight organisational aspects. The proposed designguide has been developed by the authors together with the advisory group establishedfor the work.