Sixth ISTSS Set for Marseilles in 2014

The International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security (ISTSS) will visit Marseilles, France, March 12-14, 2014, event organizers announced. Safety and security have been high on the scientific agenda for decades, and the success of the ISTSS is a tribute to the pressing need for continued international research and dialogue on these issues, perhaps in particular connected to complex infrastructure such as tunnels and tunnel networks.

The SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden has established a regular ISTSS tunnel symposium that normally attracts over 200 delegates from all parts of the world. The symposia have been arranged every other year, beginning in 2004.

Call for Papers is now open. In order to guarantee the quality of the papers accepted, a Scientific Committee will review all papers. The Scientific Committee is comprised of leading experts in the field of fire and security.

The focus has mainly been on fires and safety in tunnels, but it is shifting more and more towards security. The new terrorist threats and focus on how to solve these problems is increasing. The need for expertise in this area for underground infrastructure in general is continuously increasing. We urge scientists and practicing engineers in this field to consider ISTSS as good quality forum for presenting their results. The aim is to make ISTSS as a natural forum for scientists and practicing engineers to exchange information in the future.

It all started after SP decided to present the test results from the Runehamar tunnel on a symposium in Borås in November 2003. The name of that symposium was the International Symposium on Catastrophic Tunnel Fires. The international interest for this event forced us to change venues to accommodate the unexpected number of delegates and the symposium itself was very successful with well over 200 delegates. The results presented at this symposium were so interesting and the need for continued dialogue so pressing that we were urged to arrange a new symposium, at a new location  where we knew that there would be a great interest in the results. Due to SP’s longstanding collaboration with the National Infrastructure Institute’s Center for Infrastructure Expertise, NI2-CIE, in the United States, the venue for the new symposium was chosen in the Washington, D.C., area in November 2004 in close collaboration with NI2. This became the 1st International Symposium on Safety and Security (ISTSS), thereby broadening the scope from fire issues to safety and security. Since then, the event has been held in Madrid (2006), Stockholm (2008), Frankfort (2010) and New York (2012).

For more information, visit: http://www.istss.se