Sustainability analysis of earthmoving operations

Abstract

Emissions from construction equipment are the main contributor of environmental impacts from construction processes, and mitigating these impacts is an important aspect of operations design and planning. To this end, emission estimation models play an important role in environmental management of construction operations. This paper presents an emission model that integrates with discrete-event simulation (DES) for more accurate emission estimates from construction operations compared to existing models. The paper also presents a case study which analyzes sustainability of an earthmoving operation, to demonstrate the application of DES for estimating emissions.