Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

Subject: LCSH

Dredging

Disciplines

Industrial Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

Abstract

The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers oversees dredging in hundreds of navigation projects annually, through its fleet of government equipment and through individual contracts with private industry. The research presented here sought to examine the decision to allocate dredge resources to projects systemwide under necessary constraints. These constraints included environmental restrictions on when dredging could take place in response to the migration patterns of turtles, birds, fish, and other wildlife; dredge equipment resource availability; and varying equipment productivity rates that affected project completion times. The paper discusses problem definition and model formulation of optimal dredge fleet scheduling within environmental work windows. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to provide decision makers with quantitative insights into dredging program efficiency gains that could be realized systemwide if environmental restrictions were relaxed. Opportunities exist to provide decision makers with quantitative insights into how efficiencies might be obtained if targeted research were to show that particular restricted periods could be relaxed without adverse consequences to sensitive and endangered species.

Comments

This is the authors' accepted version of the article published in Journal of the Transportation Research Board. The version of record is published at http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2426-02

There is an update to this research on page 7 of this 2016 report: https://ntl.bts.gov/lib/60000/60200/60265/optimal.pdf

DOI

10.3141/2426-02

Publisher Citation

Nachtmann, H., Mitchell, K., Rainwater, C., Gedik, R., & Pohl, E. (2014). Optimal Dredge Fleet Scheduling Within Environmental Work Windows. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, (2426), 11-19.

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