Risk-informed multi-criteria decision framework for resilience, sustainability and energy analysis of reinforced concrete buildings

ABSTRACT

With recent advancement in energy-based sustainable design of building structures, the need for inclusive yet practical models to integrate resilience and sustainability is increasingly recognized. This paper integrates structural seismic resilience and sustainability assessment methods with whole-building energy simulation techniques to present a new comprehensive decision model for the design of buildings. Risk-based multi-attribute utility theory and analytic hierarchy process are used to develop a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework considering various economic, social and environmental criteria involved in design of buildings. The model is implemented on a number of RC buildings, and the influence of building configuration on environment, seismic performance, and energy consumption is studied. It is found that shear wall ratio plays a significant role in both seismic loss and energy consumption of RC buildings. Increasing the shear wall ratio effectively reduces the direct monetary loss and downtime as well as energy consumption.

KEYWORDS:

• Risk-informed multi-criteria decision-making
• life cycle cost
• energy simulation
• sustainability
• resilience
• RC buildings

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).