Kalutara, P; Zhang, G; Setunge, S and Wakefield, R (2023) Decision-making model for sustainable management of Australian community buildings: Combined approach using analytical hierarchy process and neuro-fuzzy system. International Journal of Construction Management, 23(8), pp. 1299-1310. ISSN 1562-3599
Abstract
Community buildings such as childcare/ aged care centres, sports pavilions possesses a massive investment in Australian economy built up over generations. From one viewpoint, they are providing essential services to the community and another viewpoint, the delivery of those services is limited by the ongoing degradation of the structural and service components of buildings, the scarcity of resources and the lack of funding by state and federal governments. This poses a huge challenge to Australian local governments to sustainably manage community buildings accountable to them. Reaching the goal takes further away by the absence of a holistic decision-making model for sustainable management of Australian community buildings. This study approaches the problem holistically identifying the sustainable decisions to be made through triple bottom line (environment, economic and social) and functional aspects. Incorporation of the influencing factors of each aspect led to a comprehensive decision-making structure which was the base for developing an effective decision-making model. The design of the model is based on the combination of two analytical methods namely Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Neuro Fuzzy System (NFS). The final output of the model computes the sustainability index which interprets the total sustainability impact of a given building component. This enables building asset managers to utilise the index to prioritise the maintenance tasks of all building components. The paper encapsulates the results of a case study to explain the outputs of the model and their practical significance. The study previously conducted two industry-wide questionnaire surveys to finalise the attributes of the decision-making structure and the importance of the attributes (weightings).
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | analytical hierarchy process; Australia; community buildings; decision-making model; neuro fuzzy system; sustainability index; sustainable management |
| Index terms: | Australia, sustainable management, degradation, case study, influencing factor, analytical hierarchy process, funding, survey, manager, local government, building component, questionnaire, decision-making |
| Subjects: | economic analysis, material degradation and durability, practitioner, data collection methods, risk assessment, decision-making and optimization, administrative law, decision analysis, Geography, health safety and environment, architectural elements |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Risk Management, Construction Materials, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Legal Issues, Design Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here