Multicriteria Optimization in the Construction Field

Ever wondered how the crack on your wall or ceiling got there? If there is ever an earthquake or another natural disaster will your house be able to resist it? That crack you are worrying about most probably got there due to the materials selected in the concrete mix used to build your house. The compressive and tensile strength of any structure is based on how one selects our aggregate, cement, water, chemical and mineral admixtures. By focusing on the concrete mix it is possible to help alleviate multiple problems that affect our houses as well as every bridge, building and road that has been built with concrete. Construction projects, however, always require considering multiple criteria such as cost, manageability, time to delivery and ecological impact. It is expected that multiple trade-offs arise in these performance measures. In this project, formal multiple criteria optimization techniques will be used to characterize trade-offs in construction projects involving concrete, and to determine the best concrete mixes considering all important performance measures simultaneously. Our preliminary results involve an initial multiple objective programming model in which a series of scenarios are tried. A discussion on the results is presented. The initial ideas are discussed here.