Overcoming barriers to the reuse of construction waste material in Australia: a review of the literature

The aim of this paper is to distinguish the integrative review method from other review methods and to propose methodological strategies specific to the integrative review method to enhance the rigour of the process. Recent evidence-based practice initiatives have increased the need for and the production of all types of reviews of the literature (integrative reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and qualitative reviews). The integrative review method is the only approach that allows for the combination of diverse methodologies (for example, experimental and non-experimental research), and has the potential to play a greater role in evidence-based practice for nursing. With respect to the integrative review method, strategies to enhance data collection and extraction have been developed; however, methods of analysis, synthesis, and conclusion drawing remain poorly formulated. A modified framework for research reviews is presented to address issues specific to the integrative review method. Issues related to specifying the review purpose, searching the literature, evaluating data from primary sources, analysing data, and presenting the results are discussed. Data analysis methods of qualitative research are proposed as strategies that enhance the rigour of combining diverse methodologies as well as empirical and theoretical sources in an integrative review. An updated integrative review method has the potential to allow for diverse primary research methods to become a greater part of evidence-based practice initiatives. Show more

Research interests in addressing construction and demolition (C&D) waste management issues have resulted in a large amount of publications during the last decade. This study demonstrates that there is no systematic examination on the research development in literature in the discipline of C&D waste management. This study presents the latest research trend in the discipline through analyzing the publications from 2000 to 2009 in eight major international journals. The analysis is conducted on the number of papers published annually, main authors' contributions, research methods and data analysis methods adopted, and research topics covered. The results exhibit an increasing research interest in C&D waste management in recent years. Researchers from developed economies have contributed significantly to the development of the research in the discipline. Some developing countries such as Malaysia and China have also been making good efforts in promoting C&D waste management research. The findings from this study also indicate that survey and case study are major methods for data collection, and the data are mostly processed through descriptive analysis. It is anticipated that more future studies on C&D waste management will be led by researchers from developing economies, where construction works will remain their major economic activities. On the other hand, more sophisticated modeling and simulating techniques have been used effectively in a number of studies on C&D waste management research, and this is considered a major methodology for future research in the discipline. C&D waste management will continue to be a hot research topic in the future, in particularly, the importance of human factors in C&D waste management has emerged as a new challenging topic. Show more

During the past decades, construction and demolition (C&D) waste issues have received increasing attention from both practitioners and researchers around the world. A plethora of research relating to C&D waste management (WM) has been published in scholarly journals. However, a comprehensive understanding of the C&D WM research is somehow absent in spite of its proliferation. The aim of this paper is to develop a framework that helps readers understand the C&D WM research as archived in selected journals. Papers under the topic of C&D WM are retrieved based on a set of rigorous procedures. The information of these papers is then analyzed with the assistance of the Qualitative Social Research (QSR) software package NVivo. A framework for understanding C&D WM research is created based on the analytic results. By following the framework, a bibliometric analysis of research in C&D WM is presented, followed by an in-depth literature analysis. It is found that C&D generation, reduction, and recycling are the three major topics in the discipline of C&D WM. Future research is recommended to (a) investigate C&D waste issues in wider scopes including design, maintenance and demolition, (b) develop a unified measurement for waste generation so that WM performance can be compared across various economies, and (c) enhance effectiveness of WM approaches (e.g. waste charging scheme) based on new WM concepts (e.g. Extended Producer Responsibility). In addition to the above research findings, the approach for producing the research framework can be useful references for other studies which attempt to understand the research of a given discipline. Show more