Principal Investigator Herbert Einstein
Tuneling is one of the most expensive and uncertain civil engineering endeavors. It is, therefore, essential to quantify and explicitly consider all factors that contribute to uncertainty in cost, time and resources. Several major computer-based tools (Decision Aids for Tunneling, Decision Aids for Tunnel Exploration) have already been developed and put to use to address uncertainty. Ongoing research seeks to extend the usefulness of these tools. This project, partially supported by the MIT Portugal Program, seeks to develop a procedure that will make it possible to use experience gained from past projects, together with observations of a particular project, to update predictions about geologic/geotechnical conditions as the tunnel is constructed. The updating is done with Bayesian networks. The objective of the project is (1) to reduce the number of accidents, which can cause injury, cost money and waste time, and (2) to more accurately gauge life-cycle costs when designing a tunnel-particularly considering construction and lifetime (operational, maintenance, etc.) uncertainties.