Construction in Challenging Environments Using Intelligent Techniques

Present day construction and in its associated activities is an involved process due to the phenomenal increase in various facets of constructional activities. The complexity of the decision parameters adds new dimension in the decision making process for technology transfer. Thus, the need to rationalize the various inputs and optimize the construction planning practices becomes imperative. Several considerations that are qualitatively described by the terms such as high, medium, low, good, bad and satisfactory have an important bearing on the engineering aspects of projects and the structures therein. The subjective judgments implicit in these qualitative terms cannot be directly incorporated into the analysis and planning of engineering activities in a routine way through classical evaluation. The fuzzy set theory makes available a convenient and meaningful tool to the practising engineers to incorporate these seemingly vague but practically powerful factors in the several phases of a project life cycle. This paper reports a methodology for incorporating the fuzzy set concept into the procedural analysis of planning the buildings in challenging environments with or without proper weightages assigned for the qualitative factors. Intangible, non-quantitative and linguistic variables are considered for the evaluation process relatively in an easier way through this concept.