The ventilation system is an important element for the safety of a tunnel, as well as its investment and operating costs. Investors, operators and designers of road tunnels bear a responsibility for the safety of persons, as well as for important investment decisions. The new Road Tunnel Ventilation Compendium fosters understanding of basic aspects of ventilation in the context of tunnel safety, describes the actual state of the art and shows how to design and realise safer tunnels, at lower costs, with reliably functioning systems.

Useful risk management is not about maximizing safety, but finding the right balance between risk and safety, progress and consolidation, costs and benefits. But human risk perception is far away from rationality. In practice, many risk management procedures increase in first order officialism, bureaucracy and paperwork, but not necessarily safety. Failures and accidents happen regularly due to wrong decisions, design flaws, bad workmanship and erroneous operation. In a world of limited resources, huge funds are wasted for useless safety measures that don't even work, when subsequent...