The DEMATEL approach for integrating resilience indicators into building sustainability assessment frameworks

Resilience to natural and manmade hazards is rarely included in sustainability assessment frameworks. Despite their diverging principles, sustainability and resilience should be accounted for in conjunction with one another. This research proposes the integration of resilience indicators into preexisting sustainability assessment frameworks to create a combined building assessment framework. Given that sustainability assessment tools have been around for more than three decades, this study uses them as a basis for the integration process. Integrating resilience indicators into sustainability assessment frameworks to ensure green buildings withstand the disturbing forces of weather events or other disasters requires some tradeoffs between the two concepts. To better understand whether and to what extent the integration of resilience into sustainability assessment tools contributes or competes against the overall sustainability of buildings, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) was used. The findings suggest that Efficient Operation and Maintenance, and Energy Efficiency are the factors that contribute the most to the sustainability of buildings. Among resilience indicators, Flexible Systems, and Avoidance of Building in Hazard-Prone Areas are among the cause-factors and can impact other factors to enhance the overall sustainability of buildings. Plan and Design for Site-specific Hazards or Extreme Events was identified as the strongest factor in compromising the sustainability of buildings. Design for Durability and Structural Robustness was also noted to have the highest impact on other sustainability detractors. Furthermore, this manuscript presents data to illustrate the proposed framework's proof-of-concept and discusses the benefits and limitations of this approach along with future research opportunities.