Minimizing impact of construction material flows in cities: Innovative Co-Creation
The project MIMIC (Minimizing impact of construction material flows in cities: Innovative Co-Creation) receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, as well as from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) in the framework of the research programme "Stadt der Zukunft" and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW).
In the follow-up project to CIVIC (Construction in Vicinities: Innovative Co-Creation) an international consortium of scientists and practitioners is working on improved planning and management of construction activities, taking into account the interests of multiple actors (city authorities, construction companies, employees, citizens).
MIMIC will show how smart governance concepts can be used as support tools in the construction and urban planning process to facilitate logistics to, from and on urban construction sites. The aim is to improve mobility and reduce congestion in cities, thus reducing the negative impact of construction sites on surrounding regions. MIMIC provides a supportive platform for urban decision-making processes through the implementation of smart governance concepts including the analysis and optimisation of construction activities and site traffic.
The Austrian partners AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and BERNARD Engineers investigate in detail the construction activities of a major construction site in Vienna and its impact on the environment, economy and society. In order to enable efficient logistics for urban development processes, optimisation, traffic simulation and novel data-scientific approaches are combined.
The optimisation of construction operations deals with the coordination of workers, material delivery and storage in order to optimise resource efficiency and reduce road traffic. At AIT heuristic solution methods are developed which allow the consideration of uncertainties and dynamic changes in construction processes.
In order to evaluate the optimized solutions under real conditions, a traffic simulation is carried out. The simulation evaluates the effects of construction site traffic in terms of congestion, travel times etc. on the basis of realistic traffic volumes over the time of the day.
In addition to the simulation, the effects of real construction works on urban transport systems will be observed. Using novel data sources and efficient methods of computer science, changes caused by construction sites in Vienna are measured.
The integration of these three approaches leads to more reliable methods that enable decision makers and planners to make informed decisions based on objective data and well-documented scenarios.
