Abstract
Meeting increasingly ambitious carbon regulations in the construction industry is particularly challenging for earthmoving operations due to the extensive use of heavy-duty diesel equipment. Better planning of operations and balancing of competing demands linked to environmental concerns, costs, and duration is needed. However, existing approaches (theoretical and practical) rarely address all of these demands simultaneously, and are often limited to parts of the process, such as earth allocation methods or equipment allocation methods based on practitioners’ past experience or goals. Thus, this study proposes a method that can integrate multiple planning techniques to maximize mitigation of project impacts cost-effectively, including the noted approaches together with others developed to facilitate effective decision-making. The model is adapted for planners and contractors to optimize mass flows and allocate earthmoving equipment configurations with respect to tradeoffs between duration, cost, CO2 emissions, and energy use. Three equipment allocation approaches are proposed and demonstrated in a case study. A rule-based approach that allocates equipment configurations according to hauling distances provided the best-performing approach in terms of costs, CO2 emissions, energy use and simplicity (which facilitates practical application at construction sites). The study also indicates that trucks are major contributors to earthmoving operations’ costs and environmental impacts.
Highlights
Climate change poses significant threats to, among other things, human health (McMichael et al, 2006), economic development (Ciscar et al, 2011), and species survival (Fordham et al, 2012)
The main objective of this study, is to propose a comprehensive model that will offer useful guidance for the optimum planning and assessment of earthmoving operations while considering cost, duration, and emissions from these operations at the activity level of a project. This is achieved through finding a mass haul balance and selecting optimum distances for hauling materials from cutting to filling areas, followed by equipment selection and performance estimations per functional unit and in total, and proposing three approaches to support decision-making for earthmoving configuration allocations for each station and/or zone of earthmoving to ensure a reduction in the project’s total impacts
Earthmoving operations have been identified as a major contributor to transport infrastructure project costs and to environmental impacts (Kim et al, 2012), mainly due to various uncertainties associated with these activities
Summary
Climate change poses significant threats to, among other things, human health (McMichael et al, 2006), economic development (Ciscar et al, 2011), and species survival (Fordham et al, 2012). The main objective of this study, is to propose a comprehensive model that will offer useful guidance for the optimum planning and assessment of earthmoving operations (what might be termed a ‘cradle to grave’ model) while considering cost, duration, and emissions from these operations at the activity level of a project This is achieved through finding a mass haul balance and selecting optimum distances for hauling materials from cutting to filling areas, followed by equipment selection and performance estimations (cost, duration, energy use, and CO2 emissions) per functional unit and in total, and proposing three approaches to support decision-making for earthmoving configuration allocations for each station and/or zone of earthmoving to ensure a reduction in the project’s total impacts.
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