Highway Alignment Construction Comparison Using Object-Oriented 3D Visualization Modeling

The major aspects of highway planning are cut and fill calculations, cost estimation, and schedule duration planning. These items of highway planning are often complex and time consuming. Designing and comparing different alignment alternatives is even more time consuming and tends to be very costly. When planning for a new highway alignment, the general practice is to identify multiple alignment options and determine the best option based on multiple factors. This research proposes to automatically generate multiple alignment alternatives and the cut and fill quantities, costs, and schedules associated with each alternative in comparing different highway alignment alternatives. Building information modeling (BIM) technology has been increasingly used in resolving the complexity of a project in the building industry. However, the development of highway data schema and model using an object-oriented three-dimensional (3D) visualization is still underway and has not been fully implemented yet. This research proposes an object-oriented data model in compliance with ISO 10303 for highway design and construction. With the newly proposed data structure in highway design and construction, the automation of cost estimating and duration scheduling was achieved in identifying and comparing an optimum solution for alternative modeling and data output whose values provided aid in the selection process of design comparison. In summary, the explicit contribution to the body of knowledge that this paper claims is to propose a research procedure to improve current highway design and construction practices by applying a 3D object-oriented modeling approach to solve the problem of time-consuming highway planning related to alignment comparison. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.