Fire incident data for England road tunnels

Abstract

This paper presents a study carried out to estimate the fire rate in England road tunnels. The result is a dataset of 28 road tunnels and 59 fire incidents. All tunnels studied in this project are continuously monitored by the National Highways, Transport for London, and Fire and Rescue Services. The work presents a hitherto unavailable dataset demonstrating the fire safety rate of these tunnels. The average fire rate was estimated by a safety analysis and the findings indicate that the average fire rate in England’s road tunnels is 1.481 per billion veh-km. There is an obvious difference between the number of fire incidents in England road tunnels and the number of fire incidents on England roads. It is also found that the fire rate in England’s road tunnels is less than in other European countries considered in this study.