Design of a Tunnel Supervisory Controller using Synthesis-Based Engineering

Nowadays, each tunnel is equipped with a supervisory controller that ensures correct cooperation between the tunnel subsystems, such as lighting, ventilation, and emergency detection sensors. Practice has shown that traditional design methods require a lot of manual effort, which is error-prone, time consuming, and costly. Therefore, an alternative design method is explored. In this paper, three methods for designing a supervisory controller are discussed: traditional engineering, model-based engineering, and synthesis-based engineering. They are assessed based on three criteria, being the quality of the controller, the variability of the time-to-market, and the evolvability. The synthesis-based engineering method turns out to be the most appropriate design method. In a case study, a supervisory controller for a roadway tunnel in the Netherlands is designed using synthesis-based engineering and validated using simulation-based visualization. This case study shows that SBE is a suitable design method for designing a tunnel supervisory controller.