A BIM-GIS-IoT-Based System for Excavated Soil Recycling

Abstract

The increasing excavated soil from construction projects has become a big problem in the sustainable development of megacities worldwide. Even though excavated soil management concerns are receiving increased attention, low rates of excavated soil recycling remain a barrier to the continuous improvement of the construction industry. Nowadays, Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology has gained popularity for construction and demolition (C&D) waste management purposes. However, few studies and cases of recycling excavated soil using BIM technology have been found. This paper gives a BIM-GIS-IoT-based excavated soil recycling system to effectively integrate BIM and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into a geographic information system (GIS) to achieve scientific and reasonable recycling for excavated soil. The system mentioned above could collaboratively manage information from the government, developers, construction enterprises, transportation companies, and recycling facilities to meet the requirement for the specific communication, analysis, decision-making, and recycling plan preparation of the excavation project. In addition, it provides a systematic method and applies relevant information technology required to recycle the excavated soil effectively in the excavation project. The system is intended to provide a fundamental digital construction model for excavated soil recycling, regardless of whether it is invoked by the existing application software or a program tailored to the demands of a specific organization or stakeholders. It makes excellent use of the rich information stored in digital information models, may create a mapping to the input data required by the application, or automatically convert the basic model to facilitate the specific analysis. This system can not only serve as an excavation project simulation tool before construction, but also serve as a tool to recycle the excavated soil and cost evaluation. The developed model is applied via case studies within an excavation project. Different plans are described and compared in detail in several aspects of the schedule, revenue, and contract, finding that actual benefits will differ depending on the project’s limiting conditions. The result indicates ample opportunity for the advantages of the BIM-GIS-IoT-based excavated soil recycling system in the excavation project.

Keywords

• excavated soil
• recycling
• BIM-GIS-IoT-based
• system