MULTIPLE CRITERIA CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT DECISIONS CONSIDERING RELATIONS BETWEEN CRITERIA

Decision making in construction management has been always complicated especially if there were more than one criterion under consideration. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) has been often applied for complex decisions in construction when a lot of criteria were involved. Traditional MCDM methods, however, operate with independent and conflicting criteria. While in every day problems a decision maker often faces interactive and interrelated criteria. Accordingly, the need of improving and supplementing the methodology of compromise decisions arose. It was proposed to supplement TOPSIS (Technique for the Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method and integrate the Mahalanobis distance in the usual algorythm of TOPSIS. Mahalanobis distance measure offered an option to take the correlations between the criteria into considerations while making the decision. A case study of building redevelopment in Lithuanian rural areas was presented that demonstrated the application of the proposed methodology. The case study proved that the proposed TOPSIS-M (TOPSIS applying Mahalanobis distance measure) method could have substantial influence in carrying the proper decision.