Optimization in Civil & Environmental Engineering

Today's highly capitalized societies require maximum benefit with minimum cost. In order to find a low cost design in practice, experienced engineers have traditionally used trial-and-error methods based on their intuitive engineering sense. However, their approaches have not guaranteed optimal or near-optimal designs, which is why researchers have been interested in optimization methods. Mathematically speaking, optimization refers to finding the best vector from a set of feasible alternative vectors.

Civil engineering, which includes structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, water resources engineering, environmental engineering, transportation engineering, and construction management, can be an industrial sector which derives great benefit from the optimization because these techniques can result in significant cost savings in public infrastructure construction and management that require enormous budget.

This book intends to show a big picture how the optimization techniques can be applied to various civil engineering problems in 1) construction and project management, 2) structural engineering, 3) water and environmental engineering, and 4) transportation engineering.