Toronto, Jun 9 (IANS): A team of researchers at a Canadian university has developed an advanced 4-D technique to avoid costly delays often associated with massive public infrastructure projects.

"Any delay in the work on one segment might impact the work on another, which ultimately results in delaying the whole project and augmenting the cost," said senior study author Amin Hammad of Concordia University in Montreal.

"The simulation methods we've developed help contractors analyse the schedule and eliminate the risks," Hammad added.

The study was recently published in the journal Automation in Construction.

Reconstructing heavily used highways is an extremely complex process because of the need to maintain traffic flow. Therefore, a plan is usually required to gradually shift the traffic from the existing segments to the newly built ones.

The parallel coordination of construction and demolition activities with traffic flow is essential to the success of projects, according to Hammad.

"That's why our new modelling method uses a 4-D approach -- taking into account the three normal space axes, plus time, to coordinate the traffic phasing with the demolition and construction of the old and new segments, respectively," he said.

This method is the first to integrate stochastic simulation techniques -- algorithms to predict randomness -- with 3-D modelling of highways to generate 4-D representations that can be used to detect and plan for scheduling clashes, and define the feasible sequences in which the segments of the highway bridges can be constructed or demolished.