Sustainable Decision-Making in Civil Engineering, Construction and Building Technology

Edmundas Zavadskas,Tatjana Vilutiene,Hojjat Adeli,Jurgita Antucheviciene

doi:10.3390/su10010014

Edmundas Zavadskas, Tatjana Vilutiene + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10010014

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Abstract

Sustainable decision-making in civil engineering, construction and building technology can be supported by fundamental scientific achievements and multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) theories. The current paper aims at overviewing the state of the art in terms of published papers related to theoretical methods that are applied to support sustainable evaluation and selection processes in civil engineering. The review is limited solely to papers referred to in the Clarivate Analytic Web of Science core collection database. As the focus is on multiple-criteria decision-making, it aims at reviewing how the papers on MCDM developments and applications have been distributed by period of publishing, by author countries and institutions, and by journals. Detailed analysis of 2015–2017 journal articles from two Web of Science categories (engineering civil and construction building technology) is presented. The articles are grouped by research domains, problems analyzed and the decision-making approaches used. The findings of the current review paper show that MCDM applications have been constantly growing and particularly increased in the last three years, confirming the great potential and prospects of applying MCDM methods for sustainable decision-making in civil engineering, construction and building technology.

Highlights

Civil engineering is based on fundamental scientific achievements
It was found that the number of publications on multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods increased by 56 percent in the three-year period
The article was focused on the MCDM techniques and approaches that are being employed for decision-making in sustainability issues, those related to the construction sector

Summary

Introduction

Civil engineering is based on fundamental scientific achievements. In the design and construction of engineering structures and buildings, theoretical methods are applied that are based on the fundamental sciences, such as mathematics, physics and chemistry. Over the last five years (2013–2017) a number of review articles have been prepared dealing with the achievements in these areas of fundamental sciences and their application in civil engineering as well as in building and construction. Optimizations “inspired by nature” based on chemistry [1], physics [2] and other natural sciences [3] were described. Applications of gravitational search algorithms [4], simulated annealing [5] and central force metaheuristic optimization [6] as nature-inspired conceptual frameworks in engineering are presented. A comprehensive review of tuned mass dampers for the vibration control of structures was provided [17]

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