Professor Alan Vardy chaired the fifth international conference in the Safety in Road and Rail Tunnels (SIRRT) series that was held recently in Marseilles.
All five of the conferences have been joint efforts between the University and Tunnel Management International and have on average attracted around 250 delegates from all over the world, including many tunnel managers, chief fire officers, directors of safety and head of government safety authorities. At this year's conference keynote speakers came from the USA, Australia, Japan, Sweden, France and the UK to talk on a range of issues including risk, disaster prevention, standards and operation.
Alan said, "I believe that this influential conference series has had a significant impact on tunnel design and tunnel operation worldwide. We all know that there have been some terrible tunnel fires in the past decade, but we can never know how many more there would have been if the conferences had not taken place. There is no doubt that most major tunnels are far better equipped now than they were at the time of the first conference in 1992."