Evaluation of Architectural Styles and Formulation of Performance Indicators for Passive-Defense-Oriented Architecture

Abstract

Throughout history, there had been only a short number of years that were without wars, and the contemporary situation confirms that nowadays the military operations often begin with thorough aerial bombing. Given that the civilian areas are attacked, the ongoing architecture admits that the existing constructions suffer various levels of damage, which often leads to high losses. Taking into consideration the ongoing discussions concerning the contemporary architecture, the creation of the built environment, regarding all scales, falls into the sphere of the architectural knowledge and expertise. Having in mind the high annual investments for public and private constructions, and the various styles that are applied by the architects, there is an urgent need to find the architectural solutions that decrease the susceptibility of the constructions to harmful threats.

The major concern that the study undertakes to address lies in the fact that there are no sophisticated indices that present the architectural characteristics necessary for determining the levels of compliance of the building with the passive defense regime. In an attempt to address the concern, the study analyzes the architectural styles from the perspective of the passive defense concept and identifies the corresponding characteristics.

This applied research uses the method of combination. Firstly, the framework for the descriptive study was developed to define the architectural indices and sub-indices for passive defense. Subsequently, the Delphi technique was used to gain expert agreement, as well as the questionnaire for testing the compatibility of the defined indices. Later, the gathered information was processed by the method of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In addition, some simulations performed by the software package ABAQUS were used, as there are high costs for the formation of complete model testing, especially for the experiments involving resistance to explosion.

On the basis of the proposed evaluation model, the ranking of the architectural styles indicates that, out of the contemporary styles, the Eco-Tech architectural style shows the highest degree of conformity to the passive defense concept. In addition, the three major factors, which are responsible for the total consciousness of the passive defense system, account for more than 63% of the total consciousness.