A Conceptual Construct for Employing Decision Support Systems in Road Tunnels Emergency Management

Abstract

Most of the times in emergency situations, individuals need to act decisively within tight time schedules having no or limited information. In this paper we propose the exploration of a real time data Decision Support System (DSS) for emergency management. The proposed conceptual construct is based on the idea that a bridge should be built between the road operator that has the knowledge on how to react in emergency situations and as many drivers located in the tunnel, who hold pieces of information about the situation, sometimes relevant, other times not, and need guidance on how to react. Furthermore, providing individualised guidelines to different groups of people based on their location, health conditions and even ability to help others can be of paramount importance. Therefore, the proposed DSS, named SOSTunnel, is composed of two parts: a) a GPS or smart phone embedded application that acts as the user interface for drivers and the data collector for the operator and b) a DSS located in the operator's control centre that gathers, classifies and filters data while suggesting possible evacuation plans per drivers group. Apart from the proposed DSS, limitations of such systems in road tunnels are highlighted and guidelines for experimentation before their use in practice are offered.