IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v17y2014i8p953-968.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Challenges for current quantitative risk assessment (QRA) models to describe explicitly the road tunnel safety level

Author

Listed:
  • Konstantinos Kazaras
  • Konstantinos Kirytopoulos

Abstract

The number of road tunnels in Europe has increased rapidly over the last years. Nevertheless, this increasing number is raising upfront an endogenous problem, which is the severity of accidents that may occur. After the spate of tunnel fires in Europe over the past decade, the European Commission embarked upon a major review of road tunnel safety and launched the Directive 2004/54/EC that sets minimum safety requirements and suggests, apart from the measures imposed based on tunnel characteristics, the implementation of a risk assessment in several cases. As a result, many risk assessment methods have been proposed worldwide, most of them based on quantitative risk assessment (QRA) models. Although QRAs are helpful to address physical aspects and facilities of the infrastructures, current approaches in the road tunnel field have several challenges to meet in order to provide decision-makers with the overall risk picture. Taking into account that QRAs are progressively becoming the selected method to manage tunnel safety and risk, this paper's purpose is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to inform safety managers and engineers about items which are not adequately handled by current road tunnel QRA models. On the other hand, it aims to suggest potential areas in which improvements should be made. Taking into consideration the challenges and the limitations discussed herein, this paper concludes that QRA models should not be the single criterion for the safety assessment process of these critical infrastructures.

Suggested Citation

  • Konstantinos Kazaras & Konstantinos Kirytopoulos, 2014. "Challenges for current quantitative risk assessment (QRA) models to describe explicitly the road tunnel safety level," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(8), pages 953-968, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:17:y:2014:i:8:p:953-968
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2013.822916
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2013.822916
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669877.2013.822916?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Konstantinos A. Kirytopoulos & Athanasios A. Rentizelas & Ilias P. Tatsiopoulos & George Papadopoulos, 2010. "Quantitative risk analysis for road tunnels complying with EU regulations," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(8), pages 1027-1041, December.
    2. Mohaghegh, Zahra & Kazemi, Reza & Mosleh, Ali, 2009. "Incorporating organizational factors into Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) of complex socio-technical systems: A hybrid technique formalization," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 94(5), pages 1000-1018.
    3. George E. Apostolakis, 2004. "How Useful Is Quantitative Risk Assessment?," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(3), pages 515-520, June.
    4. Stanley Kaplan & B. John Garrick, 1981. "On The Quantitative Definition of Risk," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(1), pages 11-27, March.
    5. Ortwin Renn, 1998. "Three decades of risk research: accomplishments and new challenges," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 49-71, January.
    6. Zio, E., 2009. "Reliability engineering: Old problems and new challenges," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 125-141.
    7. Guanquan, Chu & Jinhui, Wang, 2012. "Study on probability distribution of fire scenarios in risk assessment to emergency evacuation," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 24-32.
    8. Didier Dubois, 2010. "Representation, Propagation, and Decision Issues in Risk Analysis Under Incomplete Probabilistic Information," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(3), pages 361-368, March.
    9. Frank Saccomanno & Palle Haastrup, 2002. "Influence of Safety Measures on the Risks of Transporting Dangerous Goods Through Road Tunnels," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(6), pages 1059-1069, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zio, E., 2018. "The future of risk assessment," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 176-190.
    2. Terje Aven, 2012. "Foundational Issues in Risk Assessment and Risk Management," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(10), pages 1647-1656, October.
    3. Aven, Terje, 2020. "Three influential risk foundation papers from the 80s and 90s: Are they still state-of-the-art?," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    4. Aven, Terje, 2018. "How the integration of System 1-System 2 thinking and recent risk perspectives can improve risk assessment and management," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 237-244.
    5. Ciro Caliendo & Maria Luisa De Guglielmo, 2017. "Quantitative Risk Analysis on the Transport of Dangerous Goods Through a Bi‐Directional Road Tunnel," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(1), pages 116-129, January.
    6. Justin Pence & Zahra Mohaghegh, 2020. "A Discourse on the Incorporation of Organizational Factors into Probabilistic Risk Assessment: Key Questions and Categorical Review," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(6), pages 1183-1211, June.
    7. Aven, Terje & Zio, Enrico, 2011. "Some considerations on the treatment of uncertainties in risk assessment for practical decision making," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 64-74.
    8. Gundula Glowka & Andreas Kallmünzer & Anita Zehrer, 2021. "Enterprise risk management in small and medium family enterprises: the role of family involvement and CEO tenure," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 1213-1231, September.
    9. S. Cucurachi & E. Borgonovo & R. Heijungs, 2016. "A Protocol for the Global Sensitivity Analysis of Impact Assessment Models in Life Cycle Assessment," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(2), pages 357-377, February.
    10. Johnson, Caroline A. & Flage, Roger & Guikema, Seth D., 2021. "Feasibility study of PRA for critical infrastructure risk analysis," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    11. Senderov, Sergey M. & Smirnova, Elena M. & Vorobev, Sergey V., 2020. "Analysis of vulnerability of fuel supply systems in gas-consuming regions due to failure of critical gas industry facilities," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    12. Carole Duval & Geoffrey Fallet-Fidry & Benoît Iung & Philippe Weber & Eric Levrat, 2012. "A Bayesian network-based integrated risk analysis approach for industrial systems: application to heat sink system and prospects development," Journal of Risk and Reliability, , vol. 226(5), pages 488-507, October.
    13. Inger Lise Johansen & Marvin Rausand, 2014. "Defining complexity for risk assessment of sociotechnical systems: A conceptual framework," Journal of Risk and Reliability, , vol. 228(3), pages 272-290, June.
    14. Senderov, Sergey M. & Vorobev, Sergey V. & Smirnova, Elena M., 2022. "Peak underground gas storage efficiency in reducing the vulnerability of gas supply to consumers in an extensive gas transmission system," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    15. Bui, Ha & Sakurahara, Tatsuya & Pence, Justin & Reihani, Seyed & Kee, Ernie & Mohaghegh, Zahra, 2019. "An algorithm for enhancing spatiotemporal resolution of probabilistic risk assessment to address emergent safety concerns in nuclear power plants," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 405-428.
    16. Tu Duong Le Duy & Laurence Dieulle & Dominique Vasseur & Christophe Bérenguer & Mathieu Couplet, 2013. "An alternative comprehensive framework using belief functions for parameter and model uncertainty analysis in nuclear probabilistic risk assessment applications," Journal of Risk and Reliability, , vol. 227(5), pages 471-490, October.
    17. Emanuele Borgonovo & Alessandra Cillo & Curtis L. Smith, 2018. "On the Relationship between Safety and Decision Significance," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(8), pages 1541-1558, August.
    18. Emanuele Borgonovo & Alessandra Cillo, 2017. "Deciding with Thresholds: Importance Measures and Value of Information," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(10), pages 1828-1848, October.
    19. Kenneth Pettersen Gould, 2021. "Organizational Risk: “Muddling Through” 40 Years of Research," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 456-465, March.
    20. Thomas Ying‐Jeh Chen & Valerie Nicole Washington & Terje Aven & Seth David Guikema, 2020. "Review and Evaluation of the J100‐10 Risk and Resilience Management Standard for Water and Wastewater Systems," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(3), pages 608-623, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:17:y:2014:i:8:p:953-968. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.