Sustainability in Construction Projects: A Systematic Literature Review

Multidimensional study of factors influencing sustainable construction adoption in Yemen: insights for implementing sustainable practices

Despite political volatility, Yemen's construction sector is gradually progressing to satisfy the country's housing needs. Most construction projects, however, employ traditional construction methods and have yet to be able to adopt sustainable construction, which is economically feasible, socially responsible, and environmentally beneficial. To support sustainable construction, this study analyzes various factors that might drive sustainable practices in construction projects in Yemen. These drivers are discovered from the literature and validated by experts using grey Delphi. Forty-four drivers were approved across three dimensions: economic, social, and environmental. These drivers are assessed using grey AHP. The economic factor is determined to be the most crucial in the adoption of sustainable construction. Competitiveness, improved well-being, and improved indoor environmental quality are rated as the top economic, social, and environmental dimensions, respectively. Overall, competitiveness is acknowledged as the most important driver for the implementation of sustainable practices in Yemen's construction projects. The study's findings were discussed with the experts who were involved in the evaluation. The findings were agreed upon, and it was underlined that a proactive approach from both construction project participants and public authorities can increase the competitiveness of sustainable construction. Additional policies to promote competitiveness of sustainable construction are also advocated.

Foamed Bitumen Mixtures for Road Construction Made with 100% Waste Materials: A Laboratory Study

Nowadays, budget restrictions for road construction, management, and maintenance require innovative solutions to guarantee the user acceptable service levels respecting environmental requirements. Such goals can be achieved by the re-use of various waste materials at the end of their service life in the pavement structure, therefore avoiding their disposal in landfill. At the same time, significant savings are achieved on natural aggregate by replacing it with such waste materials, improving the economic and environmental sustainability of road constructions. The purpose of this study is to discuss a laboratory investigation about foamed bitumen-stabilized mixtures for road foundation layers, in which the aggregate structure was entirely made up of industrial by-products and civil wastes, namely metallurgical slags such as electric arc furnace (EAF) and ladle furnace (LF) slags, coal fly (CF) ash, bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI), glass waste (GW) and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP). Combining these recycled aggregates in different proportions, six foamed bitumen mixtures were produced and investigated in terms of indirect tensile strength, stiffness modulus, and fatigue resistance. The leaching test carried out on the waste materials considered did not show any toxicological issue and the best foamed bitumen mixture’s composition was characterized by 20% of EAF slags, 10% of LF slags, 20% of MSWI ash, 10% of CF ash, 20% of GW, and 20% of RAP. Its mechanical characterization presented a dry indirect tensile strength at 25 °C of 0.62 MPa (well above the Italian technical acceptance limits), a stiffness modulus at 25 °C equal to 6171 MPa, and a number of cycles to failure at 20 °C equal to 6989 for a stress level of 300 kPa.

Innovations in freight transport: a systematic literature evaluation and COVID implications

Purpose

This paper systematically evaluates the existing literature of innovations in freight transport, including all modes, to uncover the key research themes and methodologies employed by researchers to study innovations and their implications in this industry. It analyses the role of transport and the impact of innovations during crises, such as COVID-19.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the innovations in freight transport unravels the pre-requisites of such endeavours in achieving a resilient and sustainable transport network that effectively and efficiently operates during a crisis. The authors performed keyword co-occurrence network (KCON) analysis and research focus parallelship network (RFPN) analysis using BibExcel and Gephi to determine the major resulting research streams in freight transport.

Findings

The RFPN identified five emerging themes: transport operations, technological innovation, transport economics, transport policy and resilience and disaster management. Optimisation and simulation techniques, and more recently, artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) approaches, have been used to model and solve freight transport problems. Automation innovations have also penetrated freight and supply chains. Information and communication technology (ICT)-based innovations have also been found to be effective in building resilient supply chains.

Research limitations/implications

Given the growth of e-commerce during COVID-19 and the resulting logistics demand, along with the need for transporting food and medical emergency products, the role of automation, optimisation, monitoring systems and risk management in the transport industry has become more salient. Transport companies need to improve their operational efficiency using innovative technologies and data science for informed decision-making.

Originality/value

This paper advises researchers and practitioners involved in freight transport and innovation about main directions and gaps in the field through an integrated approach for evaluating research undertaken in the area. This paper also highlights the role of crisis, e.g. COVID-19, and its impacts on freight transport. Major contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) a qualitative and quantitative, systematic and effective assessment of the literature on freight transport through a network analysis of keywords supplemented by a review of the text of 148 papers; (2) unravelling major research areas; (3) identifying innovations in freight transport and their classification as technological and non-technological and (4) investigating the impact of crises and disruptions in freight transport.

International Research Progress and Evolution Trend of Interpersonal Trust—Prospects under COVID-19 Pandemic

Retrospecting articles on interpersonal trust is of great importance for understanding its current status and future development in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially, with the widespread use of Big Data and Blockchain. In total, 1532 articles related to interpersonal trust were collected as research database to draw keyword co-occurrence mapping and timeline mapping by VOSviewer and CiteSpace. On this basis, the research content and evolution trend of interpersonal trust were systematically analyzed. The results show that: (1) Data cleaning by code was first integrated with Knowledge Mapping and then used to review the research of interpersonal trust; (2) Developed countries have contributed the most to the research of interpersonal trust; (3) Social capital, knowledge sharing, job and organizational performance, Chinese Guanxi are the research hotspots of interpersonal trust; (4) The research hotspots on interpersonal trust evolve from the level of individual psychology and behavior to the level of social stability and development and then to the level of organization operation and management; (5) At present, the research on interpersonal trust is in the outbreak period; fMRI technology and Big Data and Blockchain technology gradually become vital research tools of interpersonal trust, which provides significant prospects for the following research of interpersonal trust under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Green construction practices: ensuring client satisfaction through health and safety performance

Studies have proven that client satisfaction (CS) is greatly affected by the nature of construction practices on site. However, not much attention has been given to CS in projects that adopt green construction practices (GCPs). This study examines the effect of GCPs on CS, and the means by which CS can be achieved through health and safety performance (HSP). This study also analyses how the relationship between HSP and CS could vary depending on the level of GCPs adopted. A questionnaire with 27 items drawn from literature was used in collecting data from class A contractors in Nigeria. The study's hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. The findings of the study reveal that GCPs have a positive effect on CS. HSP proved to only partially mediate the relationship between GCPs and CS. The findings also show that the effect of HSP on CS is moderated by GCPs with the stronger effect from projects with low adoption of GCPs. The study's findings highlight the pivotal role of HSP in ensuring CS in construction projects that adopt GCPs. This study makes practical contributions to the body of existing knowledge by highlighting the need for concerted efforts by contractors such as investing in health and safety training and ensuring site workers wear personal protective equipment aimed at adhering to acceptable health and safety standards. This can be achieved through provision of funds for safety activities, monitoring, and supervision of workers to guarantee HSP which translates to CS while adopting GCPs. However, the obstacles to these are the lack of safety culture by construction organizations, lack of enlightenment on the part of construction site workers, and poor safety climate on the construction project site. Additionally, the study provides greater insight on the practice of green construction among contractors by showing that the effect of HSP on CS would differ considerably on account of the level of GCPs adopted.

Cloud Manufacturing, Internet of Things-Assisted Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technology: Reliable Tools for Sustainable Construction

The United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda on sustainable development goals (SDGs) encourages us to implement sustainable infrastructure and services for confronting challenges such as large energy consumption, solid waste generation, depletion of water resources and emission of greenhouse gases in the construction industry. Therefore, to overcome challenges and establishing sustainable construction, there is a requirement to integrate information technology with innovative manufacturing processes and materials science. Moreover, the wide implementation of three-dimensional printing (3DP) technology in constructing monuments, artistic objects, and residential buildings has gained attention. The integration of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud manufacturing (CM), and 3DP allows us to digitalize the construction for providing reliable and digitalized features to the users. In this review article, we discuss the opportunities and challenges of implementing the IoT, CM, and 3D printing (3DP) technologies in building constructions for achieving sustainability. The recent convergence research of cloud development and 3D printing (3DP) are being explored in the article by categorizing them into multiple sections including 3D printing resource access technology, 3D printing cloud platform (3D–PCP) service architectures, 3D printing service optimized configuration technology, 3D printing service evaluation technology, and 3D service control and monitoring technology. This paper also examines and analyzes the limitations of existing research and, moreover, the article provides key recommendations such as automation with robotics, predictive analytics in 3DP, eco-friendly 3DP, and 5G technology-based IoT-based CM for future enhancements.

Neighbourhood Modelling for Urban Sustainability Assessment

Climate change is becoming a dominant concern for advanced countries. The Paris Agreement sets out a global framework whose implementation relates to all human activities and is commonly guided by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), which set the scene for sustainable development performance configuring all climate action related policies. Fast control of CO2 emissions necessarily involves cities since they are responsible for 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. SDG 11 (Sustainable cities and communities) is clearly involved in the deployment of SDG 13 (Climate Action). European Sustainability policies are financially guided by the European Green Deal for a climate neutral urban environment. In turn, a common framework for urban policy impact assessment must be based on architectural design tools, such as building certification, and common data repositories for standard digital building models. Many Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tools have been developed but the growing availability of open data repositories for cities, together with big-data sources (provided through Internet of Things repositories), allow accurate neighbourhood simulations, or in other words, digital twins of neighbourhoods. These digital twins are excellent tools for policy impact assessment. After a careful analysis of current scientific literature, this paper provides a generic approach for a simple neighbourhood model developed from building physical parameters which meets relevant assessment requirements, while simultaneously being updated (and tested) against real open data repositories, and how this assessment is related to building certification tools. The proposal is validated by real data on energy consumption and on its application to the Benicalap neighbourhood in Valencia (Spain).