## 1 Introduction  
Construction activities consume a large volume of natural resources such as oil, gas, and coal, leading to a lot of greenhouse gases emissions including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and so forth. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Fifth Assessment report indicated that the construction industry consumes about 40% of global energy and emits roughly 30% of total global greenhouse gas emissions [1]. At the same time, the construction industry accumulates a vast amount of construction waste which would cause serious environmental pollution such as air pollution, land loss for waste landfilling, rainwater leaching, scouring, and infiltration of surface water [2, 3, 4]. In particular, flammable building materials, corrosive substances, and chemicals would cause critical damage to construction workers and the surrounding environment during and after construction projects. According to European Official Statistics [5], construction activities during the last few decades have generated approximately 8.2 million tons of construction waste each year, which is responsible for about 46% of the total waste. In a similar vein, statistics in Hong Kong show that more than 3158 tons of construction waste was transported to landfills per day, accounting for about 35% of municipal solid water [6]. The construction waste management situation in South Korea is similar to other countries by generating approximately 181,494 tons per day, accounting for about 45% of the total solid waste [7]. The construction waste generation along with the extensive consumption of natural resources has propelled researchers to investigate effective measures for minimising the waste. Several researchers have maintained that one of the most effective measures to alleviate the generation of construction waste at site would be incentive policies which can stimulate stakeholders to participate in waste reduction initiatives [8; 9; 10; 11]. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [10], for example, showed that a gradual increase of intensive policy for waste reduction would make employees join waste reduction activities more effectively. Another successful method to reduce the construction waste would be an increase in the financial burden imposed by the government, which could encourage stakeholders to take part in avoiding additional costs from their construction waste generation [3; 12; 13; 14]. According to [PERSON] and [PERSON] [3], the waste management regulations which stipulate detailed regulations, norms, and standards are one of the critical success factors for waste management in construction projects. While incentive policies and financial burdens would make it possible for the contractors and developers to reduce construction waste over a period of time, reducing the construction waste from a site should be considered as the most effective approach which could not only minimise waste generation and eliminate waste disposal on site but also lower the construction cost of waste sorting for recycling, transporting, and disposal to a landfill [6; 10; 15; 16; 17]. The estimation of waste generation from construction projects is a significant step to identify the reduction potential, as well as to compare the amount of generated waste to the baseline. Moreover, the predicted amount of construction waste can be used by project stakeholders to prepare appropriate practices for managing construction waste, as well as to assess the effectiveness of the practices and provide a benchmark for reduction [18; 19]. While there have been several methods to quantify waste generation during the construction phase, it is an arduous task to estimate the amount of generated waste because of the wide variety of construction materials and longer period needed to construct a building or structure. [PERSON] et al. [20], for example, calculated the construction waste based on the amount of purchased construction materials and the waste rate (%) of each material discarded during the construction phase.