Bring your own tunnel
Contribute with your own tunnel project
In order to gather as much information as possible and to be as well prepared as possible for the future, it is important that the network grows. So join your European tunnel project now! If you want to contribute to this network with your own European tunnel project, please contact Ellen van Eijk at bringyourowntunnel@cob.nl.
>> Read more about bringing your own tunnel project
Transport infrastructure is essential for European competitiveness and therefore for Europe’s prosperity. Tunnels are vital assets in this network with high availability requirements. Many of them need significant renovations, but shutting them down for long periods of time is no option. Because of the sheer volume and complexity of the work, these issues need to be addressed on a European scale. This is done by the concept Bring your own tunnel.
Bring your own tunnel focuses on a peer-to-peer network of tunnel owners and experts to share knowledge and practical experiences. The goal is to have a safe community in which problems and solutions are discussed. The network is rooted in actual practices from current and future field operations.
The concept stems from a longer collaboration of road and rail agencies, called CEDR. In 2018 CEDR accepted a joined vision paper which was introduced by Flanders and The Netherlands. As a result, a first international workshop was organised on June 20th, 2020, and in November 2020 a large European online conference followed, Beyond a tunnel vision, with more than 500 attendees from over 15 countries.
In 2021 a knowledge programme was formulated in which all tunnel owners (rail and road) from The Netherlands and Flanders are involved. A series of three workshops in 2022 and 2023 on actual tunnel renovation issues aims to consolidate this track towards a knowledge network by offering ‘hands-on’ settings where experts can exchange knowledge and views.
Workshops as stepping stones
The general idea is to have a number of workshops between spring 2022 and winter 2023. Each of these workshops focuses on one particular tunnel construction and renovation issue (rail or road). The tunnel owner will introduce the issue. After the introduction, the speaker and a group of selected experts (other tunnel owners, industry, and knowledge institutes) will examine the problems from different angles and build a ‘plan of action’ for the owner.
Workshop Monitoring and data collection of immersed tunnels
The next workshop will take place on Tuesday the 6th of September 2022 in Copenhagen, Denmark. During this week the WTC 2022 will be held in the same city. In this workshop we explore how we can transform the monitoring strategy which was developed for older tunnels in The Netherlands, into knowledge we can use for newly built or not yet built tunnels such as the Fehmarnbelt tunnel. By organising this workshop in collaboration with the Danish Road Directorate and the Sund und Baelt organisation we can also investigate how this knowledge can be used for the other older tunnels in Denmark.
>> Learn more about this workshop
Possible future workshop
For a possible next workshop a theme is already formulated: The COB wants to give a workshop at the TRA 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal about building a collaborative knowledge network itself, where we share the lessons learned so far.
Structural health analysis (HSA)
In order to properly determine the (civil engineering) scope of tunnel renovations in the Netherlands and Flanders, more insight is needed. The Structural health analysis (SHA) of the COB gives a tunnel owner insight into the civil engineering condition of the tunnel construction.
