Showalter, W E and Halpin, D W (2008) Dynamic programming approach to optimization of site remediation. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 134(10), pp. 820-827. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Environmental restoration is a matter of national concern. Decades of abuse by industry, agriculture, and the military have caused devastating contamination of the earth, air, and water. The Department of Energy alone will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on containment and restoration. It is imperative that restoration costs are minimized. Every dollar spent on restoration is a dollar that will not go toward research, a dollar that will not go to upgrade our nation's infrastructure. The work presented here uses cost as a decision variable in restoration projects. Contaminated sites frequently vary from one point to another in type and level of contamination. In addition, a single piece of property may contain several distinct contaminated areas, each of which has characteristics unlike any of the other areas. Thus one should look at optimizing the selection of remediation technologies to address the variation. A methodology has been developed that will optimize the selection of remediation technologies based on cost. This methodology uses geostatistics and dynamic programming to break a site into discrete cells and then select the optimal sequence of remediation technologies.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | computer programming; cost estimates; environmental issues; optimization; restoration |
| Index terms: | programming, variation, methodology, restoration, environmental issue, geostatistics, dynamic programming, contamination, cost estimate |
| Subjects: | environmental health, statistical analysis, research methods, algorithms, renovation and retrofit, contractual condition, financial and cost management, environmental issues, programming |
| Topics: | Digital Applications, Contract Administration, Research Practice, Engineering Principles, Cost Management, Sustainability |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
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