Using 4D CAD to visualize the impacts of highway construction on the public

Highway construction activities have a multitude of impacts on the public that change over time and with location. In devising strategies to manage and minimize these impacts, gaining an in-depth understanding about timing and spatial extents of them is crucial. However, in practice gaining such understanding is difficult due to the complex and varying nature of the impacts. To support project planners with understanding a highway construction project's impacts upfront, we developed a 4D modeling method that visualizes the most important attributes of the impacts on the public, namely their spatial extents and their progression over time. By applying the method to support a Dutch highway expansion project, we show that, compared to 2D methods, the proposed 4D modeling method provides an integral perspective of the spatial changes of the project impacts over time that allows for the evaluation of various scenarios with relative ease.