Risk evaluation of tunneling projects

Tunneling industry has seen great advancements in underground construction projects. Now, it has significant difference with the last two decades. In many times, tunneling projects find themselves involved in the situation where unexpected conditions threaten the continuation of project. Managers always look for a reliable technique to overcome limitations of finance and time. TOPSIS method is widely used to solve multi criteria decision making (MADM) problems. This technique assigns the best alternative among a pool of feasible alternatives. Furthermore, due to inherent uncertainties in tunneling, using fuzzy logic in order to take into account these uncertainties can be useful. In addition, new factors are introduced to promote the accuracy of risk analysis. Finally, a real world case study is presented to show the effectiveness and the accuracy of the new risk evaluation model. The results demonstrated that collapse is the riskiest parameter in Ghomroud water conveyance tunneling project. (C) 2012 Politechnika Wroclawska. Published by Elsevier Urban & Partner Sp. z.o.o. All rights reserved.