Development of an integrated decision-making model for the sustainable management of community buildings in Australia
Creators: name: Kalutara, Pushpitha Lalith
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: Infrastructure owned by local government such as roads, bridges, community buildings etc. represents an investment which has been built up over generations. Community buildings such as childcare centres, aged care centres, and sports pavilions, with a total value of over 15 billion Australian dollars in 2006, are the second largest infrastructure asset in Australia in terms of capital value. Community buildings play a key role in providing essential services to the community. Hence, their sustainable management is vital to local councils, but the delivery of those services has been limited by the ongoing degradation of the structural and service components of buildings, the scarcity of resources and the lack of funding by state and federal governments. Sustainable management is heavily dependent on, and implemented through, councils’ decision-making structures.<br><br>This study explores the sustainability practice of community buildings in broad, not only leaned to the parameters of the environmental aspect, through a detailed study of current practice and an extensive literature review of the sustainable management of buildings. The sustainable management of community buildings has been considered from four viewpoints: environmental, economic, social and functional. It was then combined with influencing factors of each aspect. Two industry-wide questionnaire surveys were conducted to identify the key influencing factors and their relative importance. The research pinpointed 18 criteria to represent four sustainability aspects following the application of “Factor analysis” technique to the given responses of the first questionnaire. The findings led to the development of a three-level hierarchical decision-making structure and later to the production of a decision-making model. <br><br>The model followed in two methods analytically; the evaluation technique of one of two methods was solely based on Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP). The other evaluation technique was a combination of AHP and Neuro Fuzzy System. The output of the model computes the sustainability index which interprets the total sustainability impact caused by a given building component. Hence, building asset managers can use the sustainability index to prioritize the maintenance tasks of building components. The study also focuses on the cost-optimization of maintenance activities, considering on-going deterioration and the performance to be maintained during the planned period. Lastly, the research determines the best intervention times for the renewal of whole building assets during the planned period. The study presented here was conducted as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) linkage project which is research collaboration among RMIT University and six Victorian local councils.<br><br>The outcomes of the project will enable building asset managers to optimise their decision-making on planned maintenance, rehabilitation and capital expenditure on the basis of a realistic understanding of the building deterioration. The outcomes are delivered through a user-friendly web-based software tool with comprehensive and flexible asset management data-base capabilities. The national benefit includes the significant improvement of service delivery in terms of demand, social aspects, user comfort, risk mitigation and sustainability arising from the better design and management of community buildings.<br><br>