A Case Study on UAV-assisted Construction Surplus Soil Treatment Plant Management in Taiwan

Abstract

Construction surplus soil tracking management has been the key management issue in Taiwan since 1991. This is mainly due to the construction surplus soils were often regarded as disposable waste and were disposed openly without any supervision, leading to environmental pollution. Even though the surplus soils were gradually being viewed as reusable resources, some unscrupulous enterprises still dump them freely for their own convenience. In order to dispose these surplus soils, site offices are required to confirm with the soil treatment plant regarding the approximate soil volume for hauling vehicle dispatch. However, the excavated soil volume will transform from bank volume to loose volume upon excavation, which may differ by a certain speculative coefficient (1.3), depending on the excavation site and geological condition. For managing and tracking the construction surplus soils, local government authorities frequently performed plant site spot check, but the lack of rapid assessment tools for soil volume estimation increased the evaluation difficulty for plant site inspectors. This study adopted unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in construction surplus soil tracking and rapidly acquired plant site photography and point cloud data, the excavated soil volume can be determined promptly after post-processing and interpretation, providing references to future surplus soil tracking management.