Low Cost Housing: A Configuration Based Decision Support System

Abstract

Affordable housing is a key issue in Pakistan whereby approximately two third of its population falls in lower middle and lower classes; and there is a lack of more than 10 million housing units. Hence there is great need for affordable lodging in Pakistan. This project aims at presenting a configuration based multi-criteria decision support system for construction of low cost affordable housing units - to aid both the industry professionals and the clients/users - by utilizing conventional and modern techniques, and materials, without compromising on quality of living. Pairwise comparisons between significant factors, affecting low cost housing, were performed by using Analytic Hierarchical Process; and by relating them to the cost estimates, the decision support system was developed. Considerable cost reduction has been achieved as a result. A software tool has been developed for the system‘s application.