World Tunnel Congress 2016, 22nd -28th April 2016, A
successful week in San Francisco: 2 319 attendees gathered around the latest
technological and technical innovations in urban underground planning
From April 22nd to
28th in San Francisco, United States, the International Tunnelling and Underground
Space Association (ITA) held its 42 nd General Assembly along with the 2016
World Tunnel Congress (WTC), co-organised with the Underground Construction Association
of SME. As states demostrate strong needs in tunnels and underground spaces for
public transports, interchange subway stations, hydroelectric infrastructures,
etc, the WTC 2016 was a unique occasion to discover the latest state-of-the art
innovations in urban planning and underground construction projects in the
United States and worldwide.
This international
event, widely recognised among tunnelling professionals, civil engineers, and public
authorities, is, indeed, the top attended annual “rendez-vous” that currently
permits to have a clear vision of the latest projects of underground
infrastructures over the planet.
This year, 2 319 participants gathered around
several strategic questions raised by countries: how are cities coping with
climate change pressures, a few months after the COP21 negotiations in Paris?
How could they improve their networks of mobility and, at the same time,
develop green and pedestrian areas above ground? What will the urban planning
of the future be? What is the future of material freight? In what way can high
technologies in tunnels and underground spaces contribute to the development of
smart cities? Convinced that the tunnelling industry have ingenious responses
to address these challenges, the ITA, along with the UCA of SME, offered the
attendees a large panel of several high profile conferences, up to 200
technical sessions, and oral and poster presentations to address these
questions and thus favour good practice and innovation sharing.
In this regard, one can evocate the ITA Tech
Session dedicated to the very recent exploitation of the Internet of Things
(IoT) by the tunnelling industry. At that occasion, a representative of SIGMA
Connectivity offered an interesting perspective of the future IoT developments,
pointing out that two strategic shifts would greatly influence the tunnelling
industry: the connexion of digital technologies with industrial products and
logistics, from the one hand, and, above all, the development of easy-to-use
IoT enablers, that will permit to drive higher volumes of data and to
considerably reduce the costs of this revolutionary technology.
Pauli
Arenram,
Chair of the Committee on New Technologies within the ITA, expressed his satisfaction
regarding the value of the exchanges: “New digital technologies have definitely
reached the tunnelling industry. There is a growing need for safer and more
reliable systems that communicate, deal with and report large data in
actionable format to the stakeholders from the investigation phase of
tunnelling projects, during the construction and the tunnel operation phase.
This ITA Tech Session was a great opportunity to find precious answers to the questions
and challenges of our industry”.
Another interesting session was held by the
ITA Committee for Underground Space (ITACUS), who orientated the discussions on
the international urban agenda, in which the United Nations, through their
Habitat Program, take a great part. As other UN Consultative Members involved
in urban development, the ITACUS, through the World Urban Campaign, is in
charge of proposing new solutions to imagine sustainable cities. Through this
open session, the ITACUS developed new insights about the role that underground
freight networks could take in this regards.
The Hyperloop technologies were also
evocated, as well as CargoCheck Systems, in order to help stakeholders in port
areas become aware of the relevance of urban underground freight systems.
“During the session, we also heard a presentation on the possibilities of
mixed-use tunnels and the implications this could have, Han Admiraal, Chair of ITACUS, explained. Rather than building a
tunnel for just one use, the future could bring urban network providers
creating underground spaces to be used by multiple parties. Urban system integrators
would bring these parties together to ensure that the underground space is used
in an efficient way. In the future, metro systems will not only move people,
they will also be able to move cargo, and to carry cables that are essential to
modern societies. Furthermore, they could be producing energy for the city
beneath which they operate. The World Tunnel Congress is the occasion to share
bright ideas that could be of high value for cities in the next few years”.
During the WTC, specific workshops were also
organized, like the Building Infrastructure Modelling (BIM) workshop. As
governments worldwide tend to mandate andrecommend BIM process, thus
recognizing its value for helping to deliver projects successfully, the
workshop aimed at identifying in what way tunnelling fundamentally differs from
civil surface construction, and to making sure that BIM standards and processes
reflect these major differences. Also, it focused on current trends in the application
of BIM technology to tunnelling, to allow teams to reduce direct costs, improve
efficiency and reduce risk.
Presentations being delivered by design, construction
and project professionals and are not aligned with particular software.
According to Jurij Karlovšek, chair of
the BIM open session, “there is a need to act fast and develop live online documents
and procedures for consultants, contractors, owners, and operators, describing
the value, data sources, best practice and possible further actions for a
project using BIM process for tunnels, because this technology is crucial for
our industry. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to share, within the
ITA, these experiences and come to dedicated global standards and guidelines that
so far are only driven by the building industry. The ITA should be a leader in
the discussion and be proactive in integrating with the civil-end legislation,
rather than waiting for tunnel owners/project proponents to dictate something
else”.
What
does the BIM
Technology aim at?
The BIM models are now much more than 3D
animation. They are intelligent constructs with embedded information that can be
shared between stakeholders throughout an organization, with the possibility to
provide significant benefit in each phase of a tunnel project lifecycle.
Innovation-oriented, the World Tunnel
Congress was also an international business-tobusiness meeting. In total, 285
booths were deployed in the Moscone Center, displaying the latest technical
devices launched by the most important champions of the tunnelling industry.
The participants had also the opportunity to
look through more than 180 posters that gave concrete answers to various topics
directly concerning civil engineers: innovative procurement processes, cost and
risk management, contractual methods, BIM technologies, and even examples of
innovative underground infrastructures built worldwide (wáter conveyance,
sewage, and storage, cross rail tunnels, Washington DC or Los Angeles Metro projects
…).
The week ended with the 42nd General Assembly
of the ITA, during which the new President of the Association, Tarcisio Celestino, a civil engineer
from Brazil, was elected. The latter presented his roadmap for his three-year
mandate: “The world population will nearly double in the next three to four
decades. This will bring a significant increase
to the need for underground facilities which will have to be designed and
constructed, in addition to the current backlog. It is the role of ITA to
indicate to government, decisions makers and the population, that underground
urban infrastructure is the correct way to go.
Looking at the past, we find out that effort
and resources have been spent in fixing mistakes like elevated transportation
routes which were later on put underground. If we start it right, we will spend
less to have better results than did the past generations. ITA also has to enhance
its consistent contribution of the Working Groups and Committees for the improvement
of design and construction techniques. By doing so and developing the idea that
underground construction is safe and reliable, we can also expect, as a
consequence, to throw some light upon their licensing processes. This has
become a bottleneck in many countries, almost eliminating the advantages for
faster and more efficient construction techniques”.
https://youtu.be/9iS9AY7AZmo
About
the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association.
The International Tunnelling and Underground
Space Association (ITA) is a non-profit and nongovernmental international
organization, which aims at promoting the use of underground space as a solution
to sustainable development. Founded in 1974 and operating out of Lausanne,
Switzerland, ITA currently associates 73 Member Nations, 300 affiliated
members, 17 Prime Sponsors and 60 supporters.
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