Prioritising sustainability factors for Australian community buildings’ management using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Abstract

The essence of Australian community buildings’ sustainable management drives through a previously established decision-making structure with four sustainability aspects and accompanying 18 criteria. Informed decisions are supported with a decision-making model that generates sustainability impacts of building components based on this decision-making structure. Building components’ individual impacts can be assigned using a numbering scale incorporated with linguistic terms. However, similar importance given to each aspect or criterion is arguable when the combined effect is considered. Hence, they should be given different weightings and their combination with individual impacts will produce final sustainability impacts. For calculating weightings, the study uses Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), widely used technique in Multi Attribute Decision-Making (MADM). The study also conducted an industry-wide questionnaire across Australian local councils because pair-wise comparison data is essential for weighting calculation. This paper presents the survey data and analysis results that captured weightings of sustainability aspects and criteria.

Keywords

• sustainable management
• sustainability impacts
• decision-making structure
• decision-making model
• AHP
• MADM