Time–Space Conflict Management in Construction Sites Using Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and Path Planning in Unity

Abstract

Time–space conflicts are one of the most common issues facing construction practices, impacting safety and productivity in several negative ways at construction sites. Therefore, implementing and developing methods to reduce the frequency of such conflicts occurring in activity workspaces can effectively enhance project performance. Space is usually a constrained resource in construction project sites; therefore, in this project, we propose an approach as a method of time–space conflict management in construction project sites. The method implements Informed Rapidly Exploring Random Tree-Star (Informed-RRT*) path planning, Discrete Event Simulation (DES), and geometry to automatically detect and resolve time–space conflicts in construction projects. To evaluate the method’s capabilities, it is tested on a case study of an earthwork operation, including the loading, hauling, dumping, and return phases. Finally, our method finds the shortest travel path and duration for each hauling truck between two given starting and end points in each phase without colliding with static obstacles (randomly placed in the site), intersection points of the trucks’ path, the start and stop time for the truck serving higher-priority construction activities, and the total duration of each truck’s earthwork operation.