Urban construction projects are essential in reducing the housing deficit of the latest urbanization trend. As such, construction projects contribute to more attractive, sustainable, and economically viable urban areas once they are finished. However, construction work and construction material flow activities cause severe negative impacts on the surrounding community during the construction process.
The MIMIC project (Minimizing impact of construction material flows in cities: Innovative Co-Creation) focuses on the social, economic, and environmental sustainability problems that arise from urban construction, and especially the logistics activities to, from, around, and on urban construction sites.
A new report is part of Work Package 2 of the MIMIC project, a JPI Europe funded research project with demonstration cases in Brussels, Vienna, Oslo, and Sweden. The objective of WP2 is the integration of state-of-the-art impact assessment methods in a practical and easy-to-use framework to assess the sustainability effects of on and off-site construction logistics and assessment of impacts.
Based on current knowledge of sustainability impacts of logistics operations, construction management, and existing calculation tools, a framework will be set up to monitor and quantify the off-site and on-site economic, social and environmental impact of construction logistics scenarios including major externalities (accidents, air pollution, climate change, infrastructure, congestion, and noise) compared to ‘business-as-usual’. Deliverable 2.1 of the MIMIC project introduces the methodologies that will be used to assess the impact of on-site and off-site construction logistics.
To cover the impact of both on-site and off-site construction logistics, the assessment framework will combine two distinct methodologies: External Cost Calculations and Life Cycle Assessment. The MIMIC report presents each methodology in detail, highlighting the scope, the system boundaries, their logistics activities, and their data collection plan. Finally, a first building stone will be laid towards expected outcomes, the feedback loop in developing the impact assessment framework, and how both methodologies will be brought together within the framework for the final deliverable by the end of the project.
Source: MIMIC