Optimizing the Environmental Impacts of the Construction Industry with Multi-Mode Activities: The Iranian Leopold Matrix Method

The construction industry and the implementation of civil engineering projects are considered as one of the causes of environmental pollution. Considering the destructive effects and the contaminants created by the implementation of the development plans, it is necessary to evaluate the environmental impacts and identify them in order to reduce the impacts. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the environmental impacts of the rural water supply project in Birjand city using the Leopold Matrix Method of Iran.

In this study, the environmental impacts of rural water supply project implementation in Birjand city during the year 2019 and in two physical-chemical and biological environments and in the construction phase were evaluated using Iranian matrix method. To this end, various implementation modes have been formulated to evaluate the environmental impacts of the project activities and a Leopold Matrix has been developed for each of them.

The results showed that the average environmental impacts during construction in the 7 execution modes were -1.58, -1.95, -2.15, -2.5, -2, -2.21 and -2.22. Also, the number of environmental impacts on surface and groundwater pollution are highest and protected areas are least.

According to the analysis performed in none of the seven matrices and columns examined for the executable states, the average rankings were not found to be less than -3.1. So the project execution the supply is approved. To minimize the impacts, the lowest environmental impacts of each activity were selected, which would mean the average environmental impact of the whole project -1.52.