A RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVE FIRE/DISASTER PROTECTION OF UTILITY TUNNEL IN KOREA

The pipes and cables buried below ground, which may have helped to improve city landscape, is becoming direct and indirect causes for various kinds of disaster in Korea. Every advantage from the use of utility tunnel can not be converted in a dollar since there is associated huge contribution to safe urban environment. The Korean government has a certain role to play in helping promote utility tunnels for the past years. Most recently, many utility tunnels have been being checked to find out safety level, especially fire safety level, and main problems and shortcomings are checked out as a result of this survey. Because the fire safety level of existing tunnel is low, possible approaches and solutions are presented according to the analysis of fire safety level. In order for these approaches to be effective, existing tunnel should be supplemented appropriately and extra equipment must be installed according to the solutions. Hopefully, by performing both improvement of existing utility tunnel that provide a fire/disaster proof and introducing new types of tunnel which influence utility management and maintenance, the recent disaster rate in Korea can be diminished up to a desirable rate in a near future.