Maximizing sustainability of existing buildings within limited upgrade budgets

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (9) ◽  
pp. 705-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moatassem Abdallah ◽  
Boateng Akyeampong ◽  
Khaled El-Rayes

Existing buildings, especially aging ones, are currently in urgent need of upgrading to improve their performance and potentially achieve green certification. Building owners often need to identify and implement building upgrades that maximize the sustainability of their buildings as well as achieve green certification programs such as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). This paper presents the development of an optimization model that maximizes the number of earned LEED points for existing buildings within a specified upgrade budget. A case study of an existing building is used to demonstrate the use of the optimization model and illustrate its capabilities. This research presents new methodology for optimizing the selection of building upgrades to maximize the sustainability of existing buildings and achieve green certification within limited budgets. The present model is expected to support decision-makers, building owners and operators, building managers, and contractors to optimize the use of their upgrade budgets and maximize sustainability of their buildings.

Proceedings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Alessandro Pracucci ◽  
Sara Magnani ◽  
Laura Vandi ◽  
Oscar Casadei ◽  
Amaia Uriarte ◽  
...  

The nearly Zero Energy building (nZEB) renovation market is currently the key feature in the construction sector. RenoZEB aims to develop a systematic approach for retrofitting by assembling different technologies in a plug and play building envelope. This paper presents the methodology used to transform the RenoZEB concept in the design system. A multi-criteria decision matrix is used for the selection of the best façade technologies within the market while the analysis of the existing building conditions allows to develop a replicable approach for designing deep retrofitting intervention through a plug&play façade. The methodology appears to be a valuable support for the selection of technologies and allows to define a design guideline for the envelope.


The selection of hospital sites is one of the most important choice a decision maker has to take so as to resist the pandemic. The decision may considerably affect the outbreak transmission in terms of efficiency , budget, etc. The main targeted objective of this study is to find the ideal location where to set up a hospital in the willaya of Oran Alg. For this reason, we have used a geographic information system coupled to the multi-criteria analysis method AHP in order to evaluate diverse criteria of physiological positioning , environmental and economical. Another objective of this study is to evaluate the advanced techniques of the automatic learning . the method of the random forest (RF) for the patterning of the hospital site selection in the willaya of Oran. The result of our study may be useful to decision makers to know the suitability of the sites as it provides a high level of confidence and consequently accelerate the power to control the COVID19 pandemic.


Author(s):  
Abbas Al-Refaie ◽  
Mays Judeh ◽  
Ming-Hsien Li

AbstractLittle research has considered fuzzy scheduling and sequencing problem in operating rooms. Multiple-period fuzzy scheduling and sequencing of patients in operating rooms optimization models are proposed in this research taking into consideration patient‘s preference. The objective of the scheduling optimization model is obtaining minimal undertime and overtime and maximum patients' satisfaction about the assigned date. The objective of sequencing the optimization model is both to minimize overtime and to maximize patients' satisfaction about the assigned time. A real-life case study from a hospital that offers comprehensive surgical procedures for all surgical specialties is considered for illustration. Research results showed that the proposed models efficiently scheduled and sequenced patients while considering their preferences and hospitals operating costs. In conclusion, the proposed optimization models may result in improving patient satisfaction, utilizing hospital's resources efficiently, and providing assistance to decision makers and planners in solving effectively fuzzy scheduling and sequencing problems of operating rooms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (06) ◽  
pp. 1875-1908
Author(s):  
Akshay Hinduja ◽  
Manju Pandey

ERP system is a software package that integrates and manages all the facets of the business and deeply influences the success of a business endeavor. The increasing competition in the market, rapidly changing demands, and increasing intricacy of business procedures induce enterprises to adopt ERP solutions. Adopting an ERP solution increases synchronization between business activities and reinforces managerial decision-making. However, it also involves a large investment, a significant amount of human resources and time, and risk of failure. Therefore, the selection of an ERP solution is a crucial decision for enterprises. To address this decision-making problem, we propose a four-stage multi-criteria decision-making approach in this paper. Three prevalent MCDM techniques, DEMATEL, IF-ANP, and IF-AHP, are used in different stages of the methodology to achieve better outcomes. The methodology incorporates the intuitionistic fuzzy sets to capture uncertainty and hesitancy involved in decision makers’ judgments. In addition, we develop a novel priority method to derive weights from the intuitionistic fuzzy preference relations. To validate the feasibility of the proposed approach, a case study is carried out on the selection of cloud-based ERP system for SMEs in the Chhattisgarh state of India, which indicates that the proposed four-stage approach effectively handles the ERP selection problem.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (23) ◽  
pp. 8737
Author(s):  
Svetlana Pushkar

This study aims to assess the similarities and differences between Finland and Spain in terms of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) Gold large office building-type projects transitioning from version 3 (v3) to version 4 (v4). The percentages of the average scores are used here to assess the achievements of the LEED-EB data. The natural logarithm of the odds ratio lnθ and Fisher′s exact 2 × 2 tests with a mid p-value are used to evaluate dichotomous data, while the exact Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney and Cliff′s δ effect size tests are used to evaluate ordinary data. The results for LEED-EB Gold large offices demonstrate similar certification strategies in Finland and Spain. These results may be useful to LEED-EB practitioners in Finland and Spain for facilitating the selection of appropriate certification strategies in line with identified high-performance credits for large offices.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moatassem Abdallah ◽  
Khaled El-Rayes ◽  
Liang Liu

Buildings have significant impacts on the environment and economy as they were reported by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in 2009 to account for 40% of the global energy consumption. Building owners are increasingly seeking to integrate sustainability and green measures in their buildings to minimize energy and water consumption as well as life-cycle cost. Due to the large number of feasiblecombinations of sustainability measures, decision makers are often faced with a challenging task that requires them to identify an optimal set of upgrade measures to minimize the building life-cycle cost. This paper presents a model for optimizing the selection of building upgrade measures to minimize the life-cycle cost of existing buildings while complying with owner-specified requirements for building operational performance and budget constraints. The optimization model accounts for initial upgrade cost, operational cost and saving, escalation in utility costs, maintenance cost, replacement cost, and salvage value of building fixtures and equipment, and renewable energy systems. A case study of a rest area building in the state of Illinois in the United States was analyzed to illustrate the unique capabilities of the developed optimization model. The main findings of this analysis illustrate the capabilities of the model in identifying optimal building upgrade measures to achieve the highest savings of building life-cycle cost within a user-specified upgrade budget; and generating practical and detailed recommendations on replacing building fixtures and equipment and installing renewable energy systems.


Author(s):  
Mahmoud Modiri ◽  
Mohammad Dashti

Today, IS supplier selection is one of the most critical steps in the outsourcing process; the success of outsourcing is highly dependent on the selection of IS suppliers. This paper proposes a new hybrid fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model, which uses decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique, analytic network process (ANP), and Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje(VIKOR) to evaluate four potential suppliers using seven factors and five decision makers using a realistic case study. the results showed that Service support is importance for outsourcing. The proposed model can help practitioners improve their decision making process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-558
Author(s):  
Erwin Delgado ◽  
Ana Barbosa-Póvoa ◽  
António Antunes

Terminals are key components of intermodal transport networks, as they are the facilities where freight is transferred between transport modes. The efficiency of such facilities crucially depends on their locations (and sizes), which are typically chosen considering two levels of analysis: local/urban and regional/country. Our focus in this presentation is the regional/country level. At this level, the problems involved in the locational (and sizing) decisions at stake are a particular variety of hub locations problems—a class of problems that has been widely studied through optimization approaches. However, they typically assume that decisions are made in a centralized management context: decision-makers not only choose the locations of intermodal terminals (or hubs), but also fully control their utilization (i.e., which terminal each user will patronize). This signifies that such approaches are not applicable when users–potentially, any companies that move freight–behave according to their own individual interests; that is, they are not applicable in a decentralized management context. In this presentation, we describe an ongoing study where (regional) intermodal terminal location problems are dealt with in this type of context considering terminals of different types and respective capacity and operation ranges. In particular, we present the complex optimization model we have developed to handle such problems, and the (sometimes counterintuitive) results it led to when applied to a case study inspired by the Portuguese reality.


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