Predictive model for the useful lifetime of a set of buildings of the archdiocese of seville

Abstract

Current predictive models related to the determination of the life of heritage buildings, including the recent norms, ISO TC59/SC14 “Design Life”, and ISO 15686 Standards on Service Life Planning, fail to resolve the uncertainty associated with the various statistical methods involved. In order to progress on this issue, in the proposed paper, the Fuzzy Building Service Life (FBSL) model is presented. This new model, implemented under XFUZZY 3.0 software, predicts the useful lifetime of a set of heritage buildings with homogeneous usage characteristics, and applies the theory of fuzzy logic to a hierarchy of factors provided by an interdisciplinary team. This FBSL model has been applied to a sample of fifty buildings of the Archdiocese of Seville (Spain) to test its validity. The correlation demonstrated between the planning for the estimated lifetime of these buildings as developed from this application, and that generated from the direct assessment carried out by different experts, leads us to conclude that the presented model constitutes an evidently useful decision-making tool for competent authorities, inasmuch as its application to a wide range of buildings enables the evolution of their deterioration over time to be determined. © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, London.