Decision-making in structural engineering using BHARAT-II method

This paper presents a simple and effective multi-attribute decision-making method, named as BHARAT-II (Best Holistic Adaptable Ranking of Attributes Technique - II), to choose the best alternatives for different structural engineering related problems. Two case studies are presented to demonstrate the proposed multi-attribute decision-making method. The first case study addresses the problem of (a). selecting the best construction method for a bridge out of 4 available methods considering 7 selection attributes, (b). selecting best structural system of bridge out of 7 structural systems considering 11 selection attributes, and (c). selecting best construction material out of 4 materials considering 4 selection attributes; the second case study addresses the problem of selecting the best structural system of a housing project by considering 4 alternative structural systems and 5 selection attributes (i.e., criteria) involving 19 sub-attributes (sub-criteria). The results of the proposed BHARAT-II decision-making method are compared with those of other well-known multi-attribute decision-making methods. The proposed method is shown to be simple to implement, providing a logical way for allocating weights to the selection attributes and adaptable to solve the best alternative selection problems of structural engineering.