Optimal planning model for school buildings considering the tradeoff of seismic resistance and cost effectiveness: a Taiwan case study

Level of seismic resistance in building design typically correlates negatively with project cost effectiveness as the two objectives of seismic resistance and cost control often conflict. As architects must regularly address this trade-off between degree of seismic safety and project cost, it is an issue that deserves to be explored further. This paper presents a methodology that uses fuzzy theory to determine architect preference functions with regard to seismic resistance and cost effectiveness, and then combine such with an indifference curve to deduce planning weights. This paper also employs the efficient frontier theory to determine the most efficient plans to serve as the basis for architects to apply this model in their own projects. Finally, this paper uses school buildings in Taichung City, Taiwan as the sample to elaborate the developed research method. Optimal planning model for school buildings was achieved to provide a paragon for architects to plan future school buildings.