The L-surF project on safety and security

Having just entered the third and ultimate year of the L-surF project, it is recognised that research on safety and security is more than welcome to the European Community. At least, this was one of the conclusions of the 2nd Security Research Conference held in Berlin under the German presidency of the European Community at the end of March 2007.

Large Scale Underground Research Facility on Safety and Security’ is the full title of the design study L-surF which is implemented as a ‘Specific Support Action’ in the 6th European Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. This design study on research infrastructure (RIDS) is being carried out by five European partners who are leading the field in safety and security research focussing on enclosed spaces. VSH (Switzerland), SP (Sweden), STUVA (Germany), TNO (The Netherlands) and INERIS (France) are concentrating their knowledge and efforts in terms of conducting a feasibility study, with the end aim of constructing a ‘Large Scale Underground Research Facility on Safety and Security’. The closer the project comes to its end, the picture of what L-surF will become in the future – after the termination of the project – becomes more apparent.

The L-surF project is subdivided into 6 Work Packages (WPs) which are increasingly merging into each other, as intended at this stage of the project. However, it still makes sense to have a closer look at each of them.

Work Package 1 is dedicated to the integration process of potential third parties. In the beginning phase of the project, INERIS, who is leading this Work Package, carried out a careful surveillance of the Consortium’s capabilities related to the most likely core activities of the future L-surF legal entity. Right now the two WPs (WP 1 and WP 6) start to interlock, because the potential future partners on the one hand and the potential legal forms of L-surF on the other (which will provide a frame and the corresponding boundary conditions for the integration of those potential partner mentioned above) depend highly on each other. It may be easily seen that these two WPs also strongly influence each other as well as the other WPs. INERIS will now include information gathered from their screening of the consortium’s skills. It will also include the preliminary results form the market analysis carried out by TNO into some description of requirements for a “second call for interest” in which third parties interested in L-surF will have to meet to join the future L-surF legal entity. The second call will be launched in July 2007.

Safety and security research is presently connected with a growing market developing on European level. Within the L-surF consortium, TNO, the Dutch organisation for applied research, is the responsible partner for the inventory of research needs and the corresponding markets. Of course, the TNO team started to screen the market situation and research needs in their own homeland based on the activities carried out by TNO itself so far. In particular from the interaction with Work Package 5 dealing with ‘Research, Training and Experimental Activities’ of the future L-surF entity, led by the German partner STUVA, the question had arisen on how and to what extend the surveillance of the market situation in the different countries of the EU could serve as a sound base for decisions necessary to control the development of L-surF into specific fields of safety and security research by defining the future activities to be covered by L-surF. Being aware of the fact that safety and security research especially related to underground spaces may never be considered as a national market but more as an international one, the consortium came to the conclusion that the information gathered from the different markets up to now could be considered as representative for the European situation. Indeed the results of the market surveillance would be further developed and validated by a screening of potential international clients, partners, and markets. As a matter of fact, the results from Work Package 2 will strongly influence WP 1 dealing with the integration of third parties, WP 5 elaborating the future L-surF activities, and WP 6 dedicated to the establishment of a legal entity called L-surF.

European research projects need to add value to the research community. Economically successful undertakings need at least one unique selling point. The possibility to offer total flexibility for research activities in subsurface spaces has been, until now, very limited. Given the huge costs of the adaptation of enclosed spaces like tunnels regarding cross sections or inclination to the client’s requirements, the idea of a ‘Convertible Contour and Shape Scheme’ called CCSS is a very promising one. VSH with its strong background in the design for underground construction (through its mother company, Amberg Engineering) is therefore well prepared to develop such a flexible system of cross sections, inclined shafts, rooms and caverns of different sizes and shapes. To fulfil as many as possible properties of spaces and surfaces required by the research community, a list of requirements to the CCSS was very carefully set up including detailed descriptions of qualities and quantities of both surface and geometric properties asked for. The second very important issue – especially in connection with fire tests – are the environmental aspects. Having a closer look at a realistic scenario of fire tests in tunnels, for example with a tunnel cross section of some 55m2, an air velocity of about 6ms 1 and a duration of at least 30 minutes for the whole test procedure, it can easily be seen that such a test will produce about 600,000 m3 of smoke in the course of one single test procedure. This huge amount of polluted air must be taken care of. Ideas and feasible solutions are worked out in Work Package 3 where also the issue of waste water treatment is looked at closely.

SP is working on new research sensors and methodologies for safety and security tests. Without a doubt Work Package 4 is the most scientific within the frame of L-surF. One of SP’s reports summarises the measuring techniques available for tunnel research and for testing in underground facilities with a focus on new technology. Additionally, advantages and disadvantages in different fields of application are outlined with a special focus on how to design measurement for fire and sprinkler tests using new measuring technology. Furthermore, the Work Package 4 is dedicated to transfer technology from other fields of scientific research into the field of underground safety and security. In the frame of this technology transfer the consortium established contact with other research institutes such as the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology Braunschweig / Göttingen. New measurement methodology based on the latest available technology may be adapted to the special requirements given by L-surF activities, for example, range or accuracy of measurement equipment or measurement methodology. The interface to L-surF’s other Work Packages is mainly considering the research needs from the scientific point of view as SP’s contribution to the Work Package 2. But also the interaction with Work Package 5 is quite strong, given that future research activities of course will strongly influence the measurement equipment needed and vice versa.

The decision on what type of activities the future L-surF entity will carry out in the years following the design study, turned out to be quite challenging for the consortium. One of the reasons for that lies in the fact that such a decision has strategic aspects which made it necessary that not only researchers but also representatives of the management of each partner participated in the decision taking process. In this process also the diversity of the different L-surF partners clearly showed up causing some additional internal evaluation and ranking discussions. The Deliverable D 5.1 ‘Definition of R&D activities’, initially planned to be finalised in the thirteenth month, had to be split into three parts, of which the first one was meant to substitute Deliverable D 5.1 while the following two parts would allow to take into consideration further developments within other Work Packages, especially results from WP 2 (Research needs, TNO).

The intermediate state of the project is a carefully established list of activities with a first classification as estimation of each activity’s business potential. Further steps are of course already planned, in which the harmonisation of experiments will play a major role and must be considered as an indispensable element in any scope of L-surF activities. European harmonisation in order to allow benchmarking of results from different tests conducted anywhere in Europe is necessary in order to save money in research and to facilitate the exchange of knowledge as well. Due to that fact the Deliverable 5.3 is dealing only with the harmonisation of test procedures, experiments and anything that has to do with research activities in the field of underground safety and security.

But who will in the end pay for all these research activities? Where will the money come from to construct a large-scale underground research facility? Are there financial sources in the European Community for such a project – and if yes, are they bound to specific legal conditions? These are some of the questions to be answered by VSH being responsible for Work Package 6. In order to structure this process four scenarios were defined which offer four different solutions to be followed in the field of safety and security research. Every single of these scenarios requires different means and forms of legal and economic organisations as well as a customer selection from the broad diversity of research and training activities in the scope of L-surF.

The construction of the large-scale infrastructure needs additionally the political and financial support of at least one European member state or to the EU affiliated state. VSH has already established corresponding contacts to several ministries in different countries in order to present them the idea of L-surF besides demonstrating the added value to a region to be gained through the establishment of such a large test facility. The European Investment Bank has capacities and financing tools fitting to the extension of L-surF. Furthermore there is a Risk Sharing Finance Facility being a financing instrument under the 6th and 7th Framework Programmes for projects in some eligible countries.

Additionally to this ‘Layout of Financial Resources’ (which is VSH’s Task 6.1) a business plan has to be worked out showing ways in which L-surF could be operated with commercial success. This business plan will comprise all of the results gathered from the several WPs and may therefore be seen as the merger and final conclusion of all tasks of the project. Last but not least VSH has to scrutinise legal forms best fitting these business operations.

Due to the very special characteristics of the L-surF project it is quite likely that the project will not end with the termination of the contract with the EC, but will rather launch a new area for L-surF through the establishment of the new entity which is foreseen according to the contract and therefore mandatory.

For that reason the L-surF consortium is confident that it will manage to find one or more solutions for the future of L-surF and that it can quite soon offer next steps to be done in order to contribute to the safety and security of the European society.

For further information please contact:
Maximilian Wietek, Hagerbach Test Gallery / Switzerland
Tel: +41 81 725 31 62
Email: [email protected]