Multi-criteria analysis and ant colony optimization for seismic design of concrete residential buildings at the early stage phase: Algerian case study

Abstract

Concrete building design is a complex engineering task that involves security and functionality requirements, prescribed by regulations, and economic constraints. Design complexity could be further emphasized if the seismic hazard is to be considered. Therefore, concrete building design could be seen as a multi-criteria task. This vision should be adopted at early stage design, since decisions made at this stage have a major impact on the structural vulnerability and the construction cost of the final design. In this study, a multi-criteria seismic design methodology is developed and applied to concrete residential buildings. The proposed methodology includes two main design criteria: construction cost and seismic vulnerability. The first criterion is evaluated based on a statistical cost model developed using Algerian database, whereas the seismic vulnerability is assessed using the Risk-UE method. The identification of the optimal design solutions is achieved using ant colony optimization (ACO). Ranking of the Pareto-optimal solutions is performed using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. A comparative study is carried out with two well-established ranking methods, namely PROMETHEE and TOPSIS. The proposed methodology is demonstrated through application in a building project in Algeria. Results show that the statistical cost model combined with ACO optimization and multi-criteria selection through AHP represent a viable and robust methodology allowing for the determination of the best design solutions, and provides an efficient tool for decision-making at early stage design for building engineers.