News from Member Nations
France
On October the 23rd, took place in Paris a one day conference on "Sustainable City - Which contribution of Underground Space". This seminar was organized by the Underground Space Committee of the AFTES, the French Tunnelling and Underground Space Association. It gathered around 80 participants from the tunnelling industry but also architects and urbanists as well as representatives of local authorities. The ITA General Secretary, Claude Berenguier, was among the participants. The seminar was concluded by M. Jean Claude Boucherat, President of the Economic and Social Council of the Ile de France Region. He agreed with what has been said along the seminar, that the underground space has to be taken into account in any urbanism plan in the cities. He will back the proposal made by the AFTES to include this topic in the new regional planning files.
In July, RFF, the French authrority in charge of the railway network, organized a conference on the Public-Private Partnership. Very interesting conferences were presented especially on different projects including underground works, such as Gautrain in South Africa, CTRL in UK, CDG Express in France. Yann Leblais, President of EFCA and member of the ITA Executive Council participated in the round table concluding this seminar. read the proceedings (in French).
Poland
On October 2nd took place in Warsaw, Poland, an International Seminar on Fire protection and safety measures in rail, roads and metro tunnels, organized by PBP-PKG, the Polish Tunnelling Committee, Metro Warszawskie, the Metro Company of Warsaw, ITA, the International Tunnelling Association and its Committee on Operational Safety of Underground Facilities, COSUF.
It gathered around 200 participants. The one day conference allow to present 5 presentations on the European Tunnel Research and ITA COSUF, as well as Emergency scenarios for tunnels and underground stations in public transport both presented by Alfred HAACK, Human Behaviour in tunnel accidents by Marieke MARTENS, Hazard in tunnels by Niels Peter HØJ, Equipment training & education of response teams, by Felix AMBERG, Structural fire protection by Niels Peter HØJ and Towards true safety management in road tunnels, by Didier LACROIX.
The presentations were followed by a round table, where the following questions were raised: What is the present status of tunnel safety in Poland and in other EU countries? What are our expectations concerning R&D? How to gain sufficient public awareness and best behaviour of the users?
The morning lecturers as well as Mr Miroslav Kosiorek and Mr Grzegorz Sztarbala answsered the questions of the assistance.
An exhibition was installed in the coffee and lunch room and allow fructuous informal discussions among the participants.
The presentations can be downloaded from the following page.
The METRO WARSZAWSKIE company is elaborating the project to build a 20.8 km long second metro line. The works on the 5.5 km long central section of this East-West line could start in 2008. The invitations to tender will be published in April 2007. Line 2 will be built entirely undergroud and the central section will be built using a full face TBM which will be used for the first time in Poland. The cost of line 2 is estimated to 2 billion euros of which the central section represent an investment of 700 million euros. A specific workshop on this subjects had been organized in 2005 by ITA and the Polish Tunnelling Committee.
M. Lejk, General Director of the Warsaw metro with Alfred Haack, President of the ITA-COSUF and Claude Berenguier, ITA Secretary General.
Spain/Morocco
The publicly owned companies SEGEC (Spain) and SNED (Morocco), responsible for the studies to build a fixed link under the Strait of Gibraltar, have awarded the contract to review the preliminary design, elaborated in 1996, to TYPSA (Spain - leader), IGEMA (Morocco), GEODATA (Italy), LOMBARDI (Switzerland). Several studies have been elaborated for the tunnel project under the Strait of Gibraltar since the preliminary design.
Those studies must be taken into consideration in order to establish a new design. The 38.9 km long tunnel of which 28 km will be built under the sea between Malabbata in Morocco and Paloma in Spain is a real challenge as it should be built 600 m under sea level, which depth will reach up to 400 m. Moreover, earthquakes can occur in the zone. These studies should be finished in 2008. It is planned to first build a 4.8 m wide service tunnel to determine in which conditions the tunnel will be built.
UK
On October, the 6th was organized by ITA and BTS a conference on "Fire protection engineering for new and existing tunnels". This conference was sponsored by UGC-BASF, one of the ITA Prime Sponsors.
It gathered 150 participants, mainly from UK, interested in learning more about the fire protection concepts as well as the different techniques of passive fire protection. The ITA Secretary General presented the activities of ITA related to safety.
The presentations made during the conference are available at the following page.
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Future Events
DAPS2006 - Singapore 13-15 November 2006
The second International Conference on Design and Analysis of Protective Structures (DAPS2006), jointly organised by the Defence Science & Technology Agency and the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, will be held in Shangri-La Hotel Singapore, on 13-15 November, 2006. The theme for this year's conference is "Advances in Protective Technology".
More information about DAPS2006 can be found at the following website
Study Day "Waterproofing and drainage - Principles, experiences and solutions" - Brussels, Belgium - 21 November 2006.
Waterproofing and drainage of underground works have to be done with care and in respect of the state of the art. During the day issues and solutions in term of waterproofing will be discussed. Download the programme - download the registration form.
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