A fuzzy expert system in buildings serviceability

Abstract

The preservation of the built heritage plays an essential role in the revitalization of current societies, being crucial to their social and economic development. The buildings’ service life should be used as a decision criterion in the definition of rehabilitation and maintenance strategies. This study proposes a model to analyse the buildings’ serviceability, which is a complex issue, since the functional service life of buildings and components are usually related with subjective concepts and requirements. For this, an expert system called as Fuzzy Buildings Service Life - FBSL is proposed, it is a computational tool that applies a fuzzy logic model for estimating the functional service life of the buildings under analysis. The fuzzy inference system (FIS) is based on professional expert knowledge and it is implemented in the open access software Xfuzzy 3.0. This model is based on 17 input factors, five related with vulnerability and 12 related with external risks and the model’s output is a functionality index. This research represents a new breakthrough in the field of thefunctionalservice life prediction, where architectural construction is considered as a single element. The expert system has been normalized through the international standard ISO 31000:2011 (risk management, assessment and analysis). This model was initiallyapplied to100heritage buildings (churches built between the 13rdand the 18thcenturies) located in Spain, being posteriorly applied to other buildings located in other European regions. In this approach, an example with five monuments is shown. Also the model was validated through the comparison to another service life prediction model, widely used in the literature, ensuring the model’s accuracy for ranking buildings’ serviceability. This model is able to accurately prioritize proactive rehabilitation actions, which is an essential dimension in order to implement preventive maintenance programs of buildings and architectural heritage sets