Performance-based engineering and multi-criteria decision analysis for sustainable and resilient building design

Abstract

In this paper, an integrated approach for a holistic (involving notions of resiliency and sustainability) building design is presented to select the optimal design alternative based on multiple conflicting criteria using the multiattribute utility theory (MAUT). A probabilistic formulation of MAUT is proposed, where the distributions of the uncertain parameters are determined by a performance-based engineering (PBE) approach. Here PBE is used to evaluate the building energy efficiency and sustainability in addition to structural safety. In the proposed framework, different design alternatives of a building are ranked based on the generalized expected utility, which is able to include the most adopted probabilistic decision models, like the expected utility and the cumulative prospect theory. The distributions of the utilities are obtained from the first-order reliability method to provide (i) good tradeoff between accuracy and efficiency, and (ii) rational decision making by evaluating the most critical realizations of the consequences of each alternative through the design point. The application of the proposed approach to a building shows that design for resilience may imply design for sustainability and that green buildings (alone) may be not resilient in the face of extreme events.1 2 expressed in terms of the direct interest of various stakeholders to define the global performance of the system. Together with the performances, the decision maker explores several design alternatives and/or actions through the building lifecycle. Subsequently, making use of the decision making system, the optimal alternative may be determined with general consensus from the stakeholders. The optimal choice takes into account multiple conflicting criteria by making use of the multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) [5]. An important challenge of MAUT for sustainable design stems from the different sources of uncertainty, giving rise to a problem of decision under uncertainty or under risk. Thus, the objective of this paper is to

A Review of Multicriteria Assessment Techniques Applied to Sustainable Infrastructure Design

“…38.6% of the analysed contributions (32 papers) are devoted to assess the sustainability of different aspects related to the design of buildings. While some authors have focused on the design assessment of particular elements of the building structure, such as slabs [19,20], columns [21], and beams [22], others pay attention to the sustainable design of building envelopes [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Pons and Aguado [32], Akadiri et al [33], Motuziene et al [34], Samani et al [35], and Nassar et al [36] also compare the sustainability of the application of different construction materials to buildings.…”

“…It shall be noted that, among the reviewed papers, only 5 explicitly present the assumed discount rates that allow to transform future costs into present currency values. In the field of building design, Mosalam et al [22] consider a discount rate of 3%, Jalei et al [25] assume a discount rate of 5%, and Perini and Rosasco [24] evaluate three different economic scenarios, with discount rates that range from 4.5% to 5.5%. Torres-Machí et al [89], when assessing the sustainability of road pavement treatments, assume a discount rate of 5%.…”

“…25.3% of the analysed manuscripts take into consideration the generation of waste resulting from the industrial processes involved in the production of construction materials or from the demolition works. Consideration is given to both solid wastes from construction materials [22,26] and water wastes [86]. Land use is an environmental concept that implies both land occupation and transformation of land.…”

Towards Resilient Vital Infrastructure Systems: Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Research Agenda

“…There are two distinguished approaches in designing infrastructures: (1) Performance-oriented approach; and (2) Capacity-oriented approach. Performance-based engineering is a widely explored discourse in the literature (see Anderies et al, 2007;Filiatrault and Sullivan, 2014;Spence and Kareem, 2014;Restemeyer et al, 2017) representing one of the approaches in designing infrastructures that has emerged from an architectural context (Oxman, 2008;Mosalam et al, 2018;Hickford et al, 2018). This approach is broadly applied at the design stage (Hickford et al, 2018), and is based on capability of infrastructures to function and perform well in response to an expected pressure or disturbance.…”

Design Automation for Smart Building Systems

“…The random nature of operation conditions gives rise to challenges in the design verification. Mosalam et al [75] have recently proposed a method based on performance-based engineering to incorporate uncertainty in building design and the optimal design decision is made by comparing the expected utility of different designs. We want to point out that similar challenges are also present in the integrated circuit (IC) design, which has to deal with an exponentially exploding multiplicity of functional states and state transitions.…”