Multi-criteria optimization system for decision making in construction design and management

All new ideas and possible variants of decisions must be compared according to many criteria, The complex nature of decision-making requires practitioners to select investment options based on a wider variety of policy considerations in addition to cost benefit analysis and pure technical considerations, In economics and decision making it is essential to be able to take into account the impacts of cultural, social, moral, legislative, demographic, economic, environmental, governmental and technological change, as well as changes in the business world on international, national, regional and local markets. Cost benefit analysis approach is a useful tool for investment decision-making from an economic perspective. Cautions should also be given to the methods of determining the value of social and local interests, Some social externalities, such as employment and regional economic impacts, are generally omitted in current practices. Current practices tend to use cardinal or ordinal scales in measure in non-monetized criteria. The use of unreasonable monetization methods in some cases has discredited cost benefit analysis in the eyes of decision makers and the public. It may be appropriate to consider these externalities in qualitative forms in a multi-criteria analysis. Multi-criteria decision making is used in various areas of human activities. The Criteria can be qualitative and quantitative. They usually have different units of measurement and differ in optimization direction. The normalization aims at obtaining comparable scales of criteria values. In the new version of the program LEVI 4 the normalization methods are including vector, linear scale, non-linear and new logarithmic techniques may be used. This software considers the main aspects of two-sided game problems. The following strategic principles are used: Wald's rule, Savage criterion, Hurwicz's rule, Laplace's rule, Bayes's rule and Hodges-Lehmann rule. This program is demonstrated by considering a real case study involving 4 evaluation criteria of the currently used external walls of individual residential buildings