Construction Simulation and Environmental Impact Analysis: Towards a 4D-Based Analysis of Road Project Variants

Théophile Elias Ngbana, Samuel Yonkeu and Conrad Boton ()
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Théophile Elias Ngbana: Department of Construction Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, Montréal, QC H3C 1K3, Canada
Samuel Yonkeu: Environment Department, Senghor University, Alexandria B.P. 2111-415, Egypt
Conrad Boton: Department of Construction Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, Montréal, QC H3C 1K3, Canada

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 20, 1-22

Abstract: Road construction work has a multitude of impacts on its host environment, and the effect of these impacts varies according to the areas it crosses. Taking these impacts into account from the earliest stages of project planning is the ideal approach pursued by planners to ensure that their plans not only take these impacts into account but also mitigate their effects as much as possible. Drawing up a project schedule that considers the impact of the work requires an in-depth understanding of its scale, spatial extent, and timing. In practice, however, such an understanding is difficult to achieve due to the complex and variable nature of impacts. To help project planners understand the impacts of a road project from the outset so they can better plan mitigation measures, we have developed a conceptual framework for four-dimensional Building Information Modeling (4D BIM) deployment that visualizes the most significant impacts on the project site’s surrounding environment in terms of their spatial extent and progression over time. By testing the method on a case study of a road improvement project in northwestern Quebec, the method shows that, compared with traditional 2D methods, the proposed 3D and 4D impact visualization modeling provides an integral perspective for visualizing and understanding spatial changes in project impacts over time and enables different possible project implementation variants to be evaluated with relative ease.

Keywords: road construction; environmental impact assessment; variant analysis; 4D construction simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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