A NEW MODEL FOR HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION SITE LAYOUT PROBLEM USING A HYBRID OPTIMIZATION APPROACH

Hashim, Ibrahim; Mathkour, Hassan I.; Mousa, A.A.

doi:10.21608/erjm.2009.69497

A NEW MODEL FOR HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION SITE LAYOUT PROBLEM USING A HYBRID OPTIMIZATION APPROACH

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Menoufiya University

² Department of Computer Science,College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Saudia Arabia

³ Basic Engineering Sciences Department, Faculty of Engineering, Menoufiya University

10.21608/erjm.2009.69497

Abstract

Undoubtedly, site layout is a veiy important planning problem for the construction of any project.
A new approach to solve the multi-objective construction site layout (MCSL) problem is
presented. It is based on the combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the TOPSIS technique.
MCSL is considered with assigning of predetermined facilities into a number of predetermined
places. The proposed approach has two main objectives. The fust is to minimize overall distance,
while the second is to reduce the number of crossing paths between diierent facilities. Also, the
approach has two characteristic features. Firstly, a new chromosome's structure is introduced,
which is adopted as it is capable to representing all possible feasible solutions. Secondly, the
algorithm is an iterative multi-objective genetic algorithm with an external population of Pareto
optimal solutions that best conform a Pareto front. To help the decision makers to extract the best
compromise solution from a fmite set of alternatives, a TOPSIS (Technique for Order Performance
by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method is adopted. A case study for a simple highway project is
presented to illustrate the application of the proposed model