The Siemens company has completed the digitalization of the Somport tunnel, which crosses the central Pyrenees between Spain and France, with a view to the new uses of intelligent mobility, including the future autonomous car. The German technology engineers were clear that their tools and processes would be able to modernize the Oscense tunnel without affecting traffic, although there is only one lane for each direction. The challenge was capital, just like the determination of the German group to execute the project in record time. The underground step, 8.6 kilometers long (the longest in Spain and located in the central Pyrenees), required a new control system to reinforce its operability, safety and benefits.
Among other improvements, the infrastructure incorporated a redundant system to accelerate the response time to any incident, with the integration of the image, the voice and the audio as allies, all in a unified way using the so -called SCADA, a Supervision and control system of industrial processes ‘Made in Siemens’ that collects and analyzes countless real -time data to make them information susceptible. In this way, decision -making is much faster and more accurate than with other tools.
According to César Fernández, head of the tunnel business in Siemens Spain, the implementation of all improvements in automation has been reduced by more than 25% thanks to the TIA Portal engineering software. To the above, the aforementioned SCADA of the Control Center was added, which allows each server to locate independently in the data centers on the Spanish and French side in case there is an incident that blocks one of the two systems. “
The Somport tunnel belongs to the European E-7 road axis and is one of the main border crossings between Spain and France since it opened in February 2003. After more than 22 years of activity, the infrastructure required some modernization of its systems to adapt to the current requirements and face the new challenges of automotive.
Iñigo Pérez Martínez, director of the Somport tunnel in Matinsa, understood from the first moment “that the scada had to have an open and personalized system based on the needs of the client.” In this way, if there was an incident in the tunnel, the new installed system allows to manage emergency plans and instantly solve any type of collision or fire. Therefore, given any alarm recorded in the DAI system (automatic incident detection), the central screen automatically shows the camera that observes the incidence and generates a recording instantaneously. In fact, nothing escapes the control of an intelligence of the renewed closed television circuit.
The first development corresponded to Elecnor Systems, technological that managed to unify the integration of audio, video and images. For Nuria Romeo Girón, responsible for the Control Center of the Somport tunnel in Matinsa, “having an integrated plans manager allows you to visualize each of the steps that the operator must take for real -time decision making.”
No traffic interruption
The complexity of the project increased due to the challenge of renewing the digital control system without closing the tunnel or any of its operations, despite the fact that the Somport tunnel is divided into seven cantons or areas that are managed by a hundred control cabinets. The first movement consisted of remodeling the entire periphery Simatic et 200s of Siemens, which collects all tunnel signals, and replace it with the new range.
That renewal, according to Siemens, “included the connection at the same time from all tunnel signals to the two systems: the old and the new.” Next, THE INTEGRATOR SIPRO ENGINEERING He found a solution based on a communications catwalk that, together with an action protocol, guarantees bidirectional communication so that the infrastructure could operate at all times. “Thanks to the four redundant PLCs of the Simatic S7-1500H family, the high availability of emergencies infrastructure was secured,” adds Xavier Gorgues Jordana, commercial director of Sipro Ingeniería.
The next phase of the project will be to create a digital twin to simulate virtual scenarios of reality and train operators in the management of all infrastructure equipment and control. In addition, “the improvement of sustainability with a Dali system”, (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) of Smart Control of LED lighting is being raised. The same sources ensure that the integration of the two aforementioned digital tools will increase both operational and energy efficiency by more than 30%, which will also result in the increase in security.
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