The tunnels were the great challenges in the process of infrastructure renewal in Spain. From this moment, SICE has not stopped working on the installation and control of tunnel and ITS systems, for clients such as the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda.
of SICE in this area, among which found the Malmasín and Somosierra tunnels, consisted of the installation of lighting, ventilation and signaling systems variable aimed at guaranteeing the safety of users in the journeys.
In these first years, the updating of the regulations of Security was frequent, prompting the company to stay ahead of the curve. cutting edge of technology and to propose new solutions capable of adapt to the needs of each client.
marked a before and after in the systems of tunnel management and control: a fire in the highway tunnel of Mont Blanc in March caused 36 deaths and in October of the same year, two Trucks collided in the Gotthard tunnel causing a fire with 11 deaths.
Regulations began to change and countries became very rigorous, not only in the type of equipment they required, but there was also a lot of emphasis on exploitation (“how to act in case of incident").
it was a basic control system, evolved into a decision support system that could operate automatically or semi-automatically, guiding the operator to when managing incidents in a coordinated manner with all actors involved: maintenance teams, firefighters, police, emergency.
And optimized infrastructure has has always been the main objective of SICE. Projects like Madrid 30th Street, Waterview Tunnel (New Zealand), Port of Tunnel Miami (USA), the Madeira Tunnels (Portugal) and the tunnels of Westconex and West Gate (Australia), among others, join the more than 150 references of tunnels controlled by SIDERA that SICE accumulates, and which total more than 400 km of tunnels and nearly 3,000 km of ITS systems to open sky on the 5 continents.
