Development of Disaster Prevention System for Accelerator Tunnel

In an enclosed space such as a particle accelerator tunnel, ensuring worker safety during a disaster is an issue of critical importance. It is necessary to have a system in which the manager can know from outside the tunnel whether there is any worker left behind and whether the worker is escaping in the right direction. Because a global positioning system (GPS) is not available in the tunnel, we are developing a disaster prevention system that uses Wi-Fi to transmit the positioning of workers, and two-way communication. The Wi-Fi access point (AP) installed in the tunnel should be radiation resistant. Additionally, the equipment carried by the worker is convenient and easy to carry. We tested the radiation hardness of commercial AP devices and developed a smartphone application to perform location information transmission and simultaneous character transmission. In 2019, we installed the system on the J-PARC Main Ring and started its operation. In this paper, the functions of the developed system and its prospects are described.