Bansal, S; Biswas, S and Singh, S K (2018) Fuzzy TOPSIS based holistic assessment of regions: Context of India. Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, 7(2), pp. 166-181. ISSN 2046-6099
Abstract
Purpose: There is a tremendous growth of housing stock with subsequent resource consumption due to rapid urbanization. Most of the existing small-scale constructions have no planning, leading to both environmental degradation and negligible resilience to hazards. The contemporary sustainability and green building concepts are difficult to apply to small individual housing units but a collective regional assessment can be made. The regulatory bodies need to assess regions for resiliency and sustainability to prioritize fund allocation. Due to varying housing typologies and unaccounted resource consumption, reliable spatial information/data are not available to quantify risks and sustainability. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: The fuzzy logic approach has been used here to propose a regional assessment factor to give a coarse relative status of each region (and not individual houses). The criterion considered incorporates both hazard safety and environmental aspects. Findings: A model of fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution based on experts' linguistic opinions has been designed with appropriate negations for prioritizing regions. Originality/value: This paper anticipates that apart from pressing the need for increasing resilience to hazards, this simplified opinion-based tool will assist the government and administrators to prioritize and strategize their funds/efforts toward achieving safety and sustainability. Depending on the evaluation and assessment, specific retrofits can be planned and executed. The assessment may be used by NGOs working in housing sector and architects and engineering professionals or academicians.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | fuzzy TOPSIS; green buildings; housing stock; regional assessment; resilience to hazards; sustainability |
| Index terms: | fuzzy topsis, fuzzy logic, fund allocation, prioritizing, urbanization, environmental degradation, resource consumption, India, architect, housing stock, housing, preference, green building, methodology |
| Subjects: | environmental resource management, urban planning, economic analysis, data science, profession, construction type, environmental impact, decision analysis, decision-making and optimization, industry analysis, research methods, decision-making and reasoning, design practice, Geography |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Risk Management, Construction Technology, Governance, Sustainability, Business Strategy, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Design Practice, Digital Applications |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
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