A knowledge-based expert system for assessing the performance level of green buildings

Abstract

Sustainability has become an important initiative discussed and undertaken, not only by private buildings, but also by public buildings which both dealing with residential, office, commercial as well as hospital. Sustainable building is the practice of designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, and removing buildings in ways that conserve natural resources and reduce pollution. Rating systems provide effective framework for assessing building environmental performance and they measure a building's sustainability by applying a set of criteria organized in different categories. A good Green Building Rating System (GBRS) should cover key indicators reflecting a building's characteristics and keep their performance in balance. This paper proposed a knowledge-based expert system as a tool to assess the performance level of a green building based on assessment factors of green building rating systems. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and fuzzy logic is adopted in order to develop the knowledge-based expert system. The data for this research collected from the experts in the field via pair-wise and Likert-based questionnaires. Using AHP, the most important parameters of rating systems according to their weights selected to be incorporated in the Fuzzy Inferences System (FIS) of fuzzy logic model. The fuzzy rules (knowledge) discovered from the collected data for FIS to assess the performance level of the green buildings from the Environmental, Social and Economical perspectives denoted as SE2. The outcome of this research is accordingly a performance assessment tool that analyzes the effect of factors in developing the sustainable building.