EVALUATING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF BUILDING MATERIALS BASED ON THEIR PERFORMANCE INDICATORS USING AHP METHOD

To complete the building construction projects sustainably, the materials used in the projects should be chosen with a well-defined set of sustainable performance indicators to advance and implement the concept of Sustainable Construction (SC) in developing countries like India. These performance indicator criteria are derived from green building rating systems, previous studies and experts’ opinions. The performance indicator criteria of sustainable building materials are evaluated according to the impact they have on the three pillars of sustainability, such as the economic, social and environmental aspects of the building construction project in general. The Analytical Hierarch Process (AHP) method is used to select the most sustainable building material depending on the evaluation of performance indicators. The performance indicators were identified during the pilot survey after getting feedbacks from experts. A total of 18 sub-criteria which are under the triple bottom line (TBL) main criteria of sustainability, and three blocks of sustainable building materials were selected as alternatives for the sake of evaluation of a case study. Then the weights and ranks of the triple bottom lines (TBL) as the main criteria and performance indicators as sub-criteria with the help of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) MCDM method were done. This study analyzed and chose the right sustainable building material based on the material’s performance indicators as criteria under the three pillars of sustainability which are the environment, economic and social, also called TBL, for the Indian construction context by framing a sustainable material performance evaluation framework.