New Model for Environmental Impact Assessment of Tunneling Projects

Abstract

Designers of infrastructure are aware that the government, owners and users become more and more concerned about negative environmental impacts of tunnels, so environmental assessment of tunnels are becoming an issue in the process of tunnel design. In this study, to assess tunnels in construction and operation phases, the matrix method, through which the “Impacting Factors” and “Environmental Components” are determined, is also outlined. The affected environment was divided into thirteen components, such as Ecology, Surface water, Air quality, etc. In this paper, matrix method was applied to evaluate the impact of tunneling in three typical tunnels and compare them with standard diagrams of Environmental Components that were derived and introduced. These tunnels were: Urban Utility tunnel in Tehran, Eurasia tunnel in Istanbul and Tsuen Wan drainage tunnel in Hong Kong. Based on the acquired results, the present paper finally concluded that among three cases, Tsuen Wan drainage tunnel affects the environment in construction phase more than others, while Eurasia tunnel effects on air quality are more significant in operation phase.

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Namin, F. , Ghafari, H. and Dianati, A. (2014) New Model for Environmental Impact Assessment of Tunneling Projects. Journal of Environmental Protection, 5, 530-550. doi: 10.4236/jep.2014.56056.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

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