Safety Challenges of Tunnel Construction Management in Dense Urban Environments: Towards Better Risk Management

Tunnels are important to today’s dense urban environments. Risk planning of such a tunnel construction includes the unique characteristics and environments, due to the high population, existing buildings, infrastructure, and transportation. However, the safety cognitive heterogeneity of tunnel construction in dense urban areas is not formalized even proper risk planning and management can help mitigate some of these challenges and ensure a successful project. Therefore, this paper examined the current practice, i.e., the safety cognitive heterogeneity involved in the decision-making process of tunnel constructions in dense urban areas from organizational, managerial, and technical. The main survey (96 responses from contractors) depicts that safety cognitive heterogeneity is available within 33 organizing criteria, 14 management criteria, and 55 technical criteria out of a total of 186 criteria. To better support the decision-making process, the authors will conduct in-depth expert interviews and investigate the heterogeneous preference to formalize the decision-making modeling.