A Framework to Evaluate School Infrastructure Project Need Using Fuzzy Expert System

Abstract

During the last decade, a large portion of infrastructure investment in Canada has been in either new school construction or school renovation. Much of this investment results from various issues such as evolving capacity needs due to student growth, changes in regional demographics and boundaries, structural improvements required in older building systems, and improvements needed to provide students and staff with a twenty-first century learning environment. Due to limited resources and budget, agencies must prioritize the most crucial needs to receive funding. While a great deal has been published on how to prioritize capital projects, there is work that must be done to formalize the framework on the process. This paper describes a comprehensive framework for enhancing the school infrastructure project prioritization process based on the unique need of school projects. The proposed framework outlines the process of input selection and integration of the fuzzy expert system to evaluate the school project need in a quantitative term. The fuzzy expert system (entirely rule-based) has been developed in consultation with the domain experts, and the application of the framework is presented with example cases. Even though the proposed framework is developed in the context of the Canadian environment, the method presented can be applied as a general framework worldwide for evaluating the school project needs by any authorities or agencies.