Concepts, models and analyses of electronic demolition of buildings

The demolition of building structures produces enormous amounts of waste materials. In most current demolition projects, a great number of demolished materials are directly sent to landfill after their primary usage due to the difficulties in finding their next usage immediately. At the same time, because of limited supply of second-hand materials, new and high quality materials are used in construction projects whose design standards can be fitted using the secondary or used materials. However, this is an inefficient method to reduce waste because off the flow nature of the current waste-exchange systems and the demolition procedure. The recent concept using deconstruction rather than destruction for demolishing a constructed facility fails to achieve widespread understanding or acceptance due to various practical limitations. In this paper, for the purpose of envisaging the deconstruction implementations in practice and promoting cascading usages of construction materials, the concept of electronic demolition (e-Demotion, eDemolition) is put forward for the first time. E-demolition is a virtual demolition approach by which the demolition information, progress and outputs are operated before the physical demolition. Furthermore, the authors set up the essential models to implement electronic demolition of buildings from the viewpoints of demolition progress, business, and information. Each model is demonstrated in accord with the conventional demolition practice and subject to the ideal deconstruction implementation. Following the electronic demolition of a real project, the physical demolition can be anticipated with a minimum of construction waste emission. <br />