620 Ingenieurwissenschaften und zugeordnete Tätigkeiten
The first stage of the work has been to collate information on bridge assessment from the participating countries. In the later stages, the aim is to provide guidelines that reflect the current best practices, a methodology that will allow for future development and sufficient flexibility to accommodate variations in national priorities as the process of harmonisation is pursued. The following tasks fall within the scope of the project: (1) a review of current procedures and standards used for bridge assessment in Europe; (2) the development of models for taking into account the bridge specific traffic conditions and material properties; (3) the use of reliability methods based on a probabilistic approach for bridge assessment including the use of measurements for updating the reliability of structural elements; and (4) the provision of recommendations for methods and procedures that can be adopted for the assessment module of the management framework highlighting where further development will be beneficial.
Für den Verkehr auf Straße und Schiene sowie für den Luft- und Seeverkehr sind kritische Infrastrukturen oft die zentralen Knotenpunkte, ohne deren Funktionieren der Güter- und Personenverkehr erheblich beeinträchtigt werden kann. Die Wichtigkeit funktionierender und robuster Verkehrsnetze und eben dieser Knotenpunkte wird bei Betrachtung der steigenden Gütertransportmengen von intra-europäischen Transportaktivitäten deutlich: So soll sich der Verkehr zwischen den Europäischen Mitgliedsstaaten bis 2020 verdoppeln. Eine umsichtige Infrastrukturentwicklung spielt daher eine besondere Rolle in Europa. So nehmen Planung und Ausbau des TEN-T-Netzes (Trans-European Networks of Transport) zwischen 2010 und 2030 550 Milliarden Euro in Anspruch. Gerade im Hinblick auf terroristische oder kriminelle Bedrohungen, Großunfälle oder immer intensiver werdende Extremwetterereignisse und andere Naturgefahren spielt die Sicherheit dieser Infrastrukturen eine wichtige Rolle in der Planung neuer sowie beim Betrieb bestehender Bauwerke.
Europa bedeutet nicht nur eine gemeinsame Währung, sondern auch die Schaffung eines gemeinsamen Marktes verbunden mit dem Abbau von Handelshemmnissen. Dies bedeutet für Produkte aus dem Bereich Straßenausstattung, dass die unterschiedlichen nationalen Anforderungen durch einheitliche europäische Anforderungen ersetzt werden. Nationale Freigaben scheinen daher nicht im Sinne Europas zu sein, da durch zusätzliche nationale Anforderungen Handelshemmnisse eher aufgebaut als abgebaut werden. Die nationalen Freigaben im Bereich Straßenausstattung dienen jedoch nicht dem Aufbau neuer Handelshemmnisse, sondern der Umsetzung europäischer Vorgaben auf nationaler Ebene. Durch die mithilfe der nationalen Freigaben getroffene Vorauswahl können bereits während der Ausschreibungsphase Produkte erkannt werden, die die nationalen Randbedingungen nicht erfüllen beziehungsweise beim Einsatz zu Kompatibilitätsproblemen führen. Um dies zu verdeutlichen, werden exemplarisch für den Bereich Straßenausstattung die europäischen Anforderungen sowie die zusätzlichen Anforderungen aus den nationalen Freigaben für Fahrzeug-Rückhaltesysteme, Verkehrszeichenfolien und Fahrbahnmarkierungen betrachtet.
Although the EU has implemented some legislation on the security of transport infrastructure in Europe (i.e. EPCIP Directive 2008/114/), the security of transport networks up to date remains a national prerogative. While research has been conducted on a European scale, operative measures are implemented only on the national level. This paper argues for an Europeanisation of transport security, focussing on practicable recommendations for achieving this goal. Additionally, the divergence between a nationally shaped risk perception and the cross-boundary nature of security threats is discussed and possible strategies to overcome this problem are outlined. Furthermore, the paper aims at fostering the debate between (transport) security stakeholders in the EU Member States and presenting incentives and arguments for a shift from a national to a European security rationale.
In the project SECMAN " SECurity MANual " a simple four-step procedure for the identification of critical road infrastructures, assessment of these infrastructures regarding various man-made threats and the determination of effective protection measures was developed. These methodologies are summarized and combined into a comprehensive best-practice manual which allows for a trans-national structured and holistic security-risk-management approach for owners and operators of road infrastructures in Europe. This paper presents the developed methodology starting from the assessment procedures of a network's criticality over an object's attractiveness and vulnerability to the selection process of appropriate protection measures.
The paper describes the development of transitions between different safety barriers in Germany but also in the context of the European standardization. In the paper practical and impact test expriences with transitions are shown. In view of the sheer number of theoretically possible combinations of safety barriers, the demand for testing every transition, even if the connecting safety barriers differ only slightly, appears to be economically unacceptable. On the other hand the experience from accidents and also from failed impact tests shows that transitions can be a risk to traffic safety. Therefore criteria for the distinction between transitions (impact test required/impact test unnecessary) are explained. In order to distinguish transitions which do not have to be impact-tested from those that require impact tests, criteria were developed and formulated.
Improving the security of critical road infrastructure is a major task for owners and operators of tunnels and bridges in the European TEN-T Network (Trans-European Networks of Transport) (European Parliament and Council 1996). Up to now, there has not been a systematic procedure for identifying and assessing critical infrastructure objects and selecting appropriate protection measures. The EC FP7 project SeRoN for the first time presents an innovative methodology in order to support road owners and operators in handling this complex task. This paper describes the methodology and project results in detail by giving an introduction into its practical application.
Despite the steadily declining number of pedestrian fatalities and injuries in most European countries during recent decades, pedestrian protection is still of great importance in the European Union as well as in Germany. This is because they still constitute a large proportion of road user casualties and are more likely to suffer serious and fatal injuries than most other road users. In 1999 only car occupants suffered more fatal injuries than pedestrians in Germany. In December 1998, EEVC WG 17 completed their review and updating of the EEVC WG 10 pedestrian test procedure that made it possible to evaluate the protection afforded to pedestrians by the front of passenger cars in an accident. Within the scope of this procedure, four different impactors are used representing those parts of the body which are injured very often and/or very seriously in vehicle-pedestrian-collisions. In a project executed by IKA and BASt, a small family car was tested according to the EEVC WG 17 test procedure. Afterwards modifications to the car were carried out in order to improve the pedestrian protection provided by the vehicle design. There were certain restrictions placed on the level of modifications undertaken, e.g. only minor modifications to vehicle styling and to the vehicle structures, which provide passenger protection. The redesigned vehicle was tested again using the WG 17 test procedure. The test results of the modified vehicle were compared with those of the standard vehicle and evaluated. The results show that considered measures for pedestrian protection in many areas of the vehicle front structure and the use of innovative techniques can lead to a significant reduction of the loads of pedestrians at an acceptable expense.
The purpose of this paper is to review injuries found in real world lateral collisions and determine the mechanisms responsible for certain kinds of biomechanical failure. During the last years the distribution of deaths among the different types of accidents has changed. Lateral collisions now are the most frequent cause of fatal and other serious injuries. Every third accident is an impact from the side, while every second fatality is the result of a lateral accident. Just a few years ago this value was no higher than 30%. This is probably the result of increasing safety standards for frontal collisions (airbags, seatbelt usage, structural improvements of cars, etc.). Although the number of registered vehicles increased, the total amount of fatalities decreased during the same period. Thus it is now necessary to pay greater attention to the lateral accident situation in order to improve road safety and decrease the number of traffic injuries. Several European organisations had decided to launch the project SID2000, which was funded by the European Commission, with the intention of gathering more knowledge on injuries occurring in lateral accidents and the mechanisms that lead to such injuries. This should enable the group to define the requirements for a new side impact dummy (SID) to be designed. Within the same project the existing TNO-EUROSID 1 was enhanced by another group and the experience gained has now enabled allowed to design a better measuring device for side impacts. The data used for this contribution came from sources from all over Europe and had to be gathered in such a manner that as many accident parameters as possible were taken into account.