Abstract
Earthmoving operations represent a sizeable percentage of highway construction costs. Accurate estimation of cut and fill quantities, as well as haul distances, are thus essential for developing realistic schedules and reliable cost estimates for highway construction projects. This paper presents a model designed to aid highway construction personnel in optimizing earthmoving operations by developing realistic mass haul diagrams. The model automates data acquisition and accounts for the presence of different soil strata and natural and (or) man-made obstructions affecting earthmoving plans. Geographic information systems (GIS) are employed to generate three-dimensional digital terrain models of the topography and soil profiles. The model is supported by a relational database for soil data and has been implemented in a prototype software developed in ArcView® environment. It provides a user-friendly interface to facilitate data entry and efficient reporting capabilities. The model has flexible input and output formats designed to facilitate data sharing with a number of commercially available software systems. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the features of the developed model.Key words: data acquisition, geographic information systems, quantity estimating, earthwork optimization.
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