Integrated decision making in civil engineering, based on multi-criteria assessment and buildings’ certification

Abstract: Significant investments are being made in the construction sector in order to raise the quality of the buildings and make them more sustainable and energy-efficient. The key aspect of these investments should be the purposeful optimization of the possible renovation and construction measures. However, this important matter usually is being pushed aside in favor of construction price and/or quality. Nevertheless, there are plenty of criteria that play a major role in building sustainable development.The main purpose of this study is to present a tool that combines multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods and building certification systems in order to make weighted decisions in complicated construction tasks. For this, a decision making model was developed with a focus on sustainability, buildings’ life cycle, MCDM methods, and building certification.The first section of this thesis, the introduction, discusses the importance of the investigated area, and the main objectives, tasks, and structure of the thesis.A literature review is presented in Section 2 – Theory. The main works in the area of sustainability, LCA, building certification, and MCDM are collected to show their role and importance and how they interact in the construction industry.Section 3 presents and discusses the main ideas and instructions of the proposed decision making model.Section 4 (Methodology) introduces the main existing and proposed techniques that I have used to implement the study.Sections 5 and 6 are the case studies, which demonstrate how the proposed methods can be used in practice.Final conclusions and recommendations are presented in Section 7.