Visualization and control of the Valik tunnel, the first highway tunnel in the Czech Republic

Tunnel Valik together with bridge across the Uhlava river belongs to the last section of the by-pass highway of the city of Plzen and D5 highway leading from Prague to Rozvadov. Control system of tunnel Valik was powered by two Czech companies, GEOVAP and Teco. Tecomat PLC devices from Teco company provides control of tunnel. Reliance SCADA provides visualization of the tunnel and saves data from running.

Tunnel Valik with its 380 meters of length ranks among shorter constructions. But with its traffic density, which is more than 20,000 vehicles per a day, it ranks among the constructions with the highest requirements for the equipment from the safety point of view.

Control system has the following structure

The main control room (consists of several PCs connected to the local network) of the Police and Road Destricts located in Svojkovice
Backup control system located in the technical station nearby the tunnel
Whole control system is divided into three parts - Control and visualization of the traffic in the tunnel including the information drive-in gates, control and visualization of the traffic in front of the tunnel and distribution box with TECOMAT TC700 PLC devices

Control room of the Police and Road Destricts located in Svojkovice

Main control room in Svojkovice

The main control room, located 25 kilometers away from the tunnel, is equipped by two computer stations. Traffic in the tunnel is displayed on the screen (controller) mounted on the wall in the Police and Road Destricts control room. Reliance provides control of the traffic in the tunnel including control of two information drive-in gates. Entire tunnel technology is controlled by seventeen TECOMAT PLC devices.

Implementation of the control system included an installation of the data server. This data server, with Reliance Control Server software, is directly connected with control computers in the main control room. The data server provides historical data that can be displayed on the sreen in the control room, communication with other systems connected to the network and data logging from the operation.

The large screen in the control room

The main control room is also equipped by

Two "monitoring" stations without control rights used by technicians. The stations are placed in control room of Road Destricts in Svojkovice
Independent station of video supervision provides self transmision of video signal from the tunnel; mutual interaction between video supervision station and video detectors is provided by direct connection between main switchboard and control system placed in the technical room nearby the tunnel
Independent station of Highway Information System which receives data from highway and tunnel traffic
Independet station which can automatically detect traffic violations, measure of the block-to-block speed, weigh the trucks driving through the tunnel

The drive-in gate can display inportant information for the drivers

Picture of the Valik tunnel

Communication

Each PC workstation of the control room is equipped by two network cards for direct connection with the main and backup control systems of the tunnel. The TECOMAT system maintains at a time the independent logic connection with each superior computer through a common physical network connection.

Reliance system continuously provides communication with data sources and controls their validity. It visually informs on the condition of communication and data validity of each object by means of yellow or red frames. It also monitors, which PLC in the tunnel is the primary or the backup one and in case of their possible substitution, it automatically switches to the primary PLC. The system controller is informed about this substitution.

Control system of the traffic in the tunnel

The system controller (screen mounted on the wall) has several view screens at his disposal. The traffic scheme is the basic scheme being used.

The top part of the screen includes:

Stable status information, which does not change even during switching to another windows
Basic information on possible fire occurrence, overview of basic physical values and illumination
Power supply conditions of the whole tunnel
Tunnel mode of operation

The main screen includes:

Stationing (i.e. distance in kilometres of the D5 motorway measured to Prague)
Condition of SOS boxes in the right tunnel tube – in the right tunnel tube and on portals
Condition of video monitoring cameras in the right tunnel tube
Setting of concrete variable traffic signs on the portals before and inside the right tunnel tube
The same items are for the left tunnel tube
Condition and remote control of the gates in the fencing before and behind the tunnel
Left corner – condition of cameras for traffic violation monitoring
Video detection system messages together with display of the detected zones and text messages of the incident detected

The bottom bar is used for monitoring and confirmation of all system messages.

Different colours are used for faults, warnings, simple messages, etc.
Monitoring, display and saving of event location, time of occurrence and disappearance of the event, text description
Here, alarms and events requiring confirmation are cleared/confirmed by the system controller

The bottom part includes a number of buttons for switching to the following view screens.