Cowi’s 5.3 km Iceland road tunnel: design and risk notes for tunnel engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
Cowi has secured the preliminary and detailed design contract from the Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration (Vegagerðin) for a new 5.3km road tunnel in northern Iceland, set to improve all‑weather connectivity on a key regional route. The long single-bore tunnel will demand detailed geotechnical characterisation of volcanic and glacially influenced ground, plus robust drainage and lining design for sub‑Arctic freeze–thaw conditions. Designers will need to address ventilation, fire and evacuation provisions consistent with European road tunnel standards, with constructability in remote terrain a central constraint.
Technical Brief
- Contract scope covers both preliminary and detailed design phases under a single appointment.
- Safety-by-design focus is expected to influence cross-section geometry, refuge spacing and systems redundancy.
Our Take
Among the 737 Infrastructure stories in our coverage, Iceland features only rarely, so a 5.3km tunnel in northern Iceland signals one of the more substantial transport interventions in a low-population, high‑hazard environment.
Cowi appears frequently in our Projects and Safety‑tagged items as a preferred designer for long Nordic tunnels, suggesting Vegagerðin is leaning on established Scandinavian rock engineering and ventilation expertise for this scheme.
For a 5.3km road tunnel in northern Iceland, long-term resilience to snow, ice ingress and rock freeze–thaw will likely dominate the design brief, which tends to push clients towards conservative linings, robust drainage and high-spec life‑safety systems compared with shorter temperate‑climate tunnels in our database.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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