Dynamic time-cost-quality tradeoff of rockfill dam construction based on real-time monitoring

Abstract

Time, cost, and quality are three key control factors in rockfill dam construction, and the tradeoff among them is important. Research has focused on the construction time-cost-quality tradeoff for the planning or design phase, built on static empirical data. However, due to its intrinsic uncertainties, rockfill dam construction is a dynamic process which requires the tradeoff to adjust dynamically to changes in construction conditions. In this study, a dynamic time-cost-quality tradeoff (DTCQT) method is proposed to balance time, cost, and quality at any stage of the construction process. A time-cost-quality tradeoff model is established that considers time cost and quality cost. Time, cost, and quality are dynamically estimated based on real-time monitoring. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method is applied to quantify the decision preferences among time, cost, and quality as objective weights. In addition, an improved non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) coupled with the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method is used to search for the optimal compromise solution. A case study project is analyzed to demonstrate the applicability of the method, and the efficiency of the proposed optimization method is compared with that of the linear weighted sum (LWS) and NSGA-II.