Construction projects assessment based on the sustainable development criteria by an integrated fuzzy AHP and improved GRA model

Abstract

Due to the increasing population and earth pollution, managing construction and infrastructure projects with less damage to the environment and less pollution is very important. Sustainable development aims at reducing damage to the environment, making projects economical, and increasing comfort and social justice. This study proposes fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and improved grey relational analysis (GRA) to assess construction projects based on the sustainable development criteria. For doing so, sustainable development criteria are first identified in economic, social, and environmental dimensions using literature review, and are then customized for urban construction projects using experts’ opinions. After designing questionnaires and collecting data, fuzzy AHP is used for determining the importance of sustainable development criteria and their subcriteria. Then, improved GRA is employed for assessing six recreational, commercial, and official centers in Isfahan regarding the weights of criteria and subcriteria. The proposed fuzzy AHP-improved GRA help us to prioritize construction projects based on the sustainable development criteria. The results of applying fuzzy AHP show that the weights of economic, social, and environmental criteria are equal to 0.330, 0.321, and 0.349, respectively, which are close to each other. This means that the importance of all three aspects of sustainability is almost equal to each other. Furthermore, “Having profits for the society”, “Increasing social justice”, and “Adherence to environmental policies” are identified as the most important indicators of sustainable development in terms of economic, social, and environmental aspects, respectively. Finally, the results of employing improved GRA determine Negin Chaharbagh recreational and commercial complex as the best project.