Identifying and Investigating the Simultaneous Effect of Effective Parameters in the Resources Allocation for Construction Projects and Optimizing Using Meta-Heuristic Algorithms

Abstract

Addressing the construction projects with decreasing execution time and gaining the optimal implementation modes and start time for all sub-activities under priority relationships, logical relationships and continuity in resource allocation, is one of the challenges of experts in this field. Solving this type of problem is one of the problems in construction projects, because resource continuity constraints and different kinds of time limitations should be reflected in the optimization procedure. Therefore, in this research, we introduce a new bi-objective model for optimal allocation of resources to project activities and simultaneously examine the effective factors including time and cost on this model. The purpose of this proposed model is to decrease project duration, while also decreasing various resource consumption. To solve the proposed bi-objective problem, multi-objective evolutionary approaches including NSGA-II and NRGA are applied. At first, the parameters of these algorithms are calibrated by Taguchi method and finally they are utilized to solve the model. In order to quantify the parameters of the proposed model, a case study related to the waste incineration plant in Iran was presented and for further comparisons, several numerical examples in larger dimensions were used. These algorithms were compared by several standard multi- objective measure metrics common in this field and the results were analyzed by statistical methods. Finally, the results showed the superior performance of the NSGA-II method. The outputs of this approach were explained for a Pareto solution selected according to experts’ opinions.