AHP has been used in research fields as diverse as health care, education, and the construction industry. Given that this study is concerned with the development of the building sector in general and sustainable building assessment methods in particular, this section presents a selection of important studies utilizing AHP in related fields.
Wong and Li (2008) identified and evaluated the criteria that affect the performance of intelligent building systems (IB), which they achieved through the use of a general survey followed by the AHP method. Since previous IB projects tended to lack a systemic method to enhance the evaluation of building technology, they proposed to lay the foundation for the selection of intelligent building systems (IB). The general observation of IB in this study includes main criteria: work efficiency; cost effectiveness;
user comfort; safety; operating and maintenance costs and reliability. AHP was the main instrument used to prioritise these dimensions (Wong and Li, 2008).
Zheng et al. (2009) recognised that the remarkable growth in the global building sector has serious consequences on the environment. This led them to study life cycle assessment (LCA) in an attempt to mitigate environmental pollution caused by intensive consumption of energy in the construction field. Zheng et al. formed a LCA model combined with extenics theory in building energy conservation, as well as providing a scientific tool for the assessment of building energy conservation. The life cycle of the construction include: Design stage, construction stage, use stage, and decommissioning stage. AHP played a major role in determining the weighting system for the proposed model (Zheng et al., 2009).
Pohekar and Ramachandran (2004) reviewed multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques in the domain of sustainable energy management. This field embraces a spectrum of subject matter, including: allocation of energy resource, renewable energy planning, building energy management, management of transportation energy, planning for energy projects, and planning electric utility. In recognition of this diversity, more than 90 published papers were analysed to determine the most popular and applicable techniques in this field. The surveyed literature showed that AHP is the most popular method, followed by outranking technique (Pohekar and Ramachandran, 2004).
Zayed et al. (2008) studied the assessment of risks and uncertainties in Chinese highway projects, at both macro and micro levels. In this context, the macro level is associated with the company: financial, political, and cultural and market risk; in contrast, the micro level is associated with the project itself: technology usage, contracts and legal issues, resources, design, quality, construction and other areas. A model was designed to determine the risk index (R-index), with AHP being used as the main instrumental tool to deliver that model (Zayed et al., 2008).
Ying et al. (2007) combined a geographical information system (GIS) with the AHP technique to study regional eco-environmental evaluation. The GIS capability of spatial analysis was supported by the effectiveness of AHP in dealing with the complexity of the eco-environment characteristics. This resulted in the creation of an integrated assessment system for eco-environmental evaluation that covers environmental pollution, natural environment, eco-environment disaster and social economy (Ying et al., 2007).
In addition, Bunruamkaew and Murayama (2011) used (GIS) and AHP technique to evaluate site suitability for ecotourism. Professional experts identified the most important criteria as: visibility, reservation/protection, land use/cover, species diversity, elevation, proximity to cultural sites, slope, and distance from roads and settlement size.
The AHP technique provided the crucial role of deriving a relative weight value for each criterion (Bunruamkaew and Murayam, 2011).
Al-Harbi (2001) employed the AHP technique in project management, in order to model the contractor prequalification problem in order to create an effective means to evaluate contractor competence and ability during a project bid. This selection requires various criteria to be examined, many of which depend on a degree of subjective judgment.
Therefore, this study established a hierarchy model comprising three levels: goal, criteria and possible alternative contractors. The main criteria that determine the best
potential contractor were shown to be financial stability, experience, quality performance, manpower resources, equipment resources and current work load. Furthermore, there are many factors that affect the choice of project delivery method (Al-Harbi, 2001).
Kanagaraj and Mahalingam (2011) examined building energy efficiency during the design stage. This study claims that the building design process requires multiple stages in securing approval for a proposed design, with many approaches in this domain that lack practical solutions. The authors attempted to bridge this gap by establishing inclusive design process named the Integrated Energy-Efficient Building Design Process (IEBDP).
The AHP technique was used resolve the controversial and conflict decisions among the varied design goals that they discussed (Kanagaraj and Mahalingam, 2011).
Teo and Ling (2006) assessed the effectiveness of safety management systems (SMS) in construction companies in order to reduce the probability of risk occurrence in construction sites. A framework including more than 500 factors and sub-factors was established and AHP technique used to process this data into a weighting system. As a result, their study enables a Construction Safety Index (CSI) to be calculated to evaluate the safety management system (SMS) in construction companies (Ai Lin Teo and Yean Yng Ling, 2006).
Hsueh and Yan (2011) developed an evaluation model to enhance sustainable community development in construction. This model sought to promote the effectiveness of energy-saving polices and to thereby help communities to mitigate their carbon footprint. The AHP technique was integrated with the Delphi method and fuzzy logic in order to create a proposed model for use by governments to evaluate the performance of low-carbon community construction projects. The domain of sustainable community development criteria in this initiative include: Natural environment, Energy efficient design, Planting, Renovation benefits, Development convenience, Living environment, Disrupted facilities, Community attractions, Local cultural attractions, Community participation community organizations (Hsueh and Yan, 2011).