Darius Kalibatas

The implementation of sustainable solutions in the design of buildings is one of the main elements in achieving the transition to sustainability. The variety of structural elements and availability of sustainable materials, and the different preferences of clients, architects, and structural designers make the decision-making process difficult. This research aims to develop a decision model for applying to the early design stage. This work evaluates the sustainability of the load-bearing structures of a commercial building. Three types of load-bearing structures have been selected and compared concerning different physical parameters, cost of construction, cost of materials, technological dimensions (duration expressed in person-hours and machine-hours), and environmental impact. The methodology combines the building information modeling, sustainability criteria, and multi-criteria decision-aiding methods. The presented case study illustrates the proposed approach. The study revealed that multi-criteria decision aiding methods give the possibility to improve the selection process and to assess the sustainability of alternative structural solutions at an early stage of building design. The proposed decision model is versatile and therefore can be applied for different cases.

Green products, clean energy, energy union, green buildings, eco-innovations, environment-related, and similar initiatives and policies have become very popular and widely applied all over the world. A pleasant built environment (parks, flowerbeds, beautiful buildings) and a repulsive environment (noise, polluted surroundings) influence a buyer’s outlook on an advertisement differently. An aesthetic, comfortable, and clean built environment evokes positive emotional states, not only at the time of housing selection and purchase but during the building’s life cycle as well. Potential housing buyers always feel comfortable in certain built environments, and they are inclined to spend more time there. The issues needing answers are how to measure the segmentation/physiological indicators (crowd composition by gender and age groups), as well as the emotional (happy, sad, angry, valence) and physiological (heart rate) states of potential homebuyers realistically, to produce an integrated evaluation of such data and offer buyers rational, green, and energy efficient housing alternatives. To achieve this purpose, the Multisensory, green and energy efficient housing neuromarketing method was developed to generate the necessary conditions. Here, around 200 million multisensory data recordings (emotional and physiological states) were accumulated, and the environmental air pollution (CO, NO₂, PM₁₀, volatile organic compounds) and noise pollution were investigated. Specific green and energy efficient building case studies appear in this article to demonstrate the developed method clearly. The obtained research results are in line with those from previous and current studies, which state that the interrelation of environmental responsiveness and age forms an inverse U and that an interest in green and energy efficient housing depends on age.

There are many various methods, techniques and materials for constructing multifunctional inverted flat roofs now. However, in practice, the constructed roofs of this type often have various defects, whose elimination is rather costly. To solve this problem, the analysis of multifunctional inverted flat roofs has been performed and their advantages and disadvantages, as well as building defects and mistakes made in the course of construction, have been demonstrated. Damp-proofing materials available on the market for making waterproofing membranes for multifunctional inverted flat roofs have been evaluated. The problem of choosing the most effective membrane alternative for the investigated type of roofs is solved by analysing ten alternatives with the help of multi-criteria evaluation method, SAW and three game theory rules determined by Hurwicz, Laplace and Bayes, as well as LEVI 3.0 program. The analysis of the results has shown that the alternative No. 5 is the best membrane alternative among the ten considered options.

An indoor environment of each building depends on a number of criteria, like temperature, humidity, noise, etc. Therefore, multi-attribute decision making (MADM) methods are used to assess alternatives and to choice the rational one. In this paper we suggest to add a concept of ideal alternative into assessment using MADM, since it allows both to determine the optimal solution and the deviation of each alternative (an indoor environment of a building) from the optimal values, e.g. ideal alternative. Therefore, a method of multi-attribute assessment using ideal alternative (MAAIA) is formulated in this paper. It is applied for the MOORA method to assess an indoor environment of apartments in block houses situated in Naujoji Vilnia, Vilnius, Lithuania. Obtained results of the assessment show that the proposed method is useful for decision support and assessment of alternatives.