AI-Powered Solutions Revolutionize Construction Waste Management for Sustainable Development

Construction waste poses a significant global challenge, prompting researchers in the building sector to explore AI-powered solutions for enhanced waste management. AI technology can optimize the sorting and recycling of construction materials, reducing the volume of waste sent to landfills.

(Photo : Pexels/Tom Fisk )

AI-Powered Solution for Construction Waste Management 

A global initiative that Northumbria University is directing at King Fahd University aims to use artificial intelligence (AI) to measure construction waste on-site while offering extra value to recycling frameworks to reduce the quantity of garbage sent to landfills.

Apart from the estimations provided by BIM models, the construction industry needs to possess a dependable instrument that precisely measures the quantity of each refuse type produced during a project. As mentioned, inadequate planning about sustainable waste reduction goals is made more difficult by the absence of real-time information. This is especially crucial considering the enormous quantity of recyclable and reusable building materials in landfills.

Moreover, a visual system is devised to capture refuse produced at construction sites' temporary storage collection points. This system will be built on video recordings of rubbish being brought into the collection locations, such as skips, loaders, and similar vehicles.

By incorporating a plug-and-play design, this system enhances the adaptability and functionalities of the data capture procedure, thereby optimizing our capacity to capture data while traversing between sites.

This will be followed by training and validating artificial intelligence models to identify trash types, with a particular emphasis on recyclable materials such as wood or plastics, and estimating the total weight of waste generated by each category. The data that was recorded will serve as the knowledge base.

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Global Problem on Construction Waste

The construction sector is a significant contributor to the over 2 billion tonnes of waste produced annually worldwide. Accordingly, the need for construction materials is expanding in tandem with the expansion of both the population and the economy. However, manufacturing new materials to support this expansion requires a significant amount of energy and resources. In 2018, 143.8 million tonnes of construction and demolition trash was disposed of in landfills. This debris comprised various materials, including asphalt, concrete, and wood.

Furthermore, except for asphalt roofing, which was predominantly disposed of in landfills, concrete exhibited the highest rate of repurposed C&D. In 2018, landfills were used to dispose of 86 percent of the total waste of asphalt shingles. These landfills do not allow the trash to break down or biodegrade.

Approximately 75% of homes in the United States and Canada have asphalt shingles installed on their roofs. A typical restoration project, such as re-roofing, can result in the generation of approximately three to four tonnes of garbage from the removal of debris from the roof of a home in the United States.

On the other hand, the trash from all kinds of building and tearing down projects is called construction and demolition waste, or C&D waste. There is a significant amount of waste generated by construction and demolition materials since they are created by a wide variety of projects, ranging from the building of residential residences to the deconstruction of international airports.

Thus, establishing efficient C&D reuse and recycling systems can benefit localities since it can generate many employment opportunities and contribute to preserving a region's architectural style by reintegrating materials sourced from the local locality.

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