OR/18/068 Objectives of the research project

From MediaWiki
Revision as of 13:19, 28 May 2019 by Dbk (talk | contribs) (1 revision imported)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Bide, T P, Brown, T J, Petavratzi, E, and Mankelow, J M. 2018. Vietnam – Hanoi city material flows. Nottingham, UK, British geological Survey. (OR/18/068).

This project attempted to quantify the demand for construction materials required for urban development in Hanoi, Vietnam. The questions that the present research explored are:

  1. What are the construction material requirements in Hanoi to meet the predicted urban expansion?
  2. What are the implications of the future material demand requirements?

Answers to the above questions can be obtained by understanding how construction materials flow through society, from initial extraction (source) to the end-of-life. This type of information facilitates better planning and decision making for the use of raw materials in terms of balancing supply with demand and ensuring no bottlenecks are present between source and end user. It also enables planning for sustainable production and consumption of raw materials. Such an analysis requires data on material production and trade, consumption and stocks that ideally would be at a city or regional level if the case study of Hanoi is to be considered. Therefore, the first stage of this research was to assess the availability of relevant data to see if an analysis of flows of construction materials on a city level was feasible, and if not what analysis could be undertaken and conclusions drawn by utilising the available data.

Due to their essential role in urban development, this research has focused primarily on materials required for construction. In addition, it was important to ensure that good quality data can be collated at the scale required to ensure that an analysis of the demand for construction materials in Hanoi can take place.

In detail the objectives of this project were:

  1. To investigate the urban development plans for Hanoi and the demand requirements for construction materials.
  2. To identify the availability of data on production and consumption of construction materials for the city of Hanoi.
  3. To quantify the demand for construction materials required for new building and infrastructure projects in Hanoi at present and in the future.
  4. To develop material flow analysis models for specified construction materials for the city of Hanoi.
  5. To investigate the implications of the demand for construction materials given the urbanisation plans for Hanoi. These may include issues around security of supply for construction materials, environmental implications associated with increasing mining activities, social issues, economic implications, technological barriers and so on. These are expected to become apparent as the project progresses further.

The research project will be completed over multiple phases. The current report presents the results from phase 1.