Citation: Elshafei, G.; Katunský, D.;
Zele ˇ náková, M.; Negm, A.
Opportunities for Using Analytical
Hierarchy Process in Green Building
Optimization. Energies 2022, 15, 4490.
https://doi.org/10.3390/en15124490
Academic Editors: Wei Wu, Mingke
Hu, Jingyu Cao, Yunfeng Wang and
Francesco Nocera
Received: 5 May 2022
Accepted: 16 June 2022
Published: 20 June 2022
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affil-
iations.
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
energies
Review
Opportunities for Using Analytical Hierarchy Process in Green
Building Optimization
Ghada Elshafei
1
, Dušan Katunský
2,
* , Martina Zele ˇ náková
3
and Abdelazim Negm
4
1
Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, Minia 61519, Egypt;
ghada.elshafei@mu.edu.eg
2
Institute of Architectural Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Košice,
040 01 Košice, Slovakia
3
Institute of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Košice,
040 01 Košice, Slovakia; martina.zelenakova@tuke.sk
4
Water and Water Structures Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University,
Zagazig 44519, Egypt; amnegm@zu.edu.eg
* Correspondence: dusan.katunsky@tuke.sk; Tel.: +421-5-602-4157
Abstract: The adoption of green building technology has become significant for ensuring sustainable
development; it has become the main step to a sustainable future. The designs for green buildings
include finding a balance between comfortable home construction and a sustainable environment.
Moreover, the application of emerging technology is also used to supplement existing methods in the
development of greener buildings to preserve a sustainable built environment. The main problem of
this research is how to tackle the environmental parameters balance based on new techniques that
are being used for green building optimization. To mitigate the cumulative effect of the constructed
climate on human wellbeing and the regular ecosystem, the most popular goals for green buildings
should be planned. This can be achieved by efficient use of natural resources such as energy, water,
and other resources and minimizing waste. This will contribute to the security of occupant health,
enhancement of work performance, emissions control, and improvement of the environment. In
the construction of green buildings, several criteria that may contradict, interrelated indistinct and
of qualitative and/or quantitative environment are broadened to utilize. This paper provides a
detailed state of the art analysis on improving existing practices in green architecture/building using
analytical hierarchy process (AHP) techniques to tackle the environmental balancing values based
on optimal strategies and designs by green solutions to help make the best possible option from
numerous options.
Keywords: green architecture; green building; AHP method; optimization design; renewable energy
1. Introduction
The buildings that propose a flexible, relaxed, and energy efficient nature for living at a
low price has been the aspirations of residents of buildings. Several innovative design tech-
nologies have been introduced to accomplish this objective, to improve building efficiency,
and to meet a range of human requirements and environmental sustainability [1]. Also,
AHP’s inherent capacity to cope with diverse styles of decisions, where it has been normally
been applied in its development, has become its executive research aim throughout the last
few years [2].
The implementations of green building problems, techniques, and theories are unique
for the greatest challenges in structural planning. The techniques are a portion of the design
method in urban planning, landscape, and building. Where the role of environmental
design is assigned to architects from a single floor to a whole home, from a multi-storied
structure to a large urban space that could even be found in a megacity [3]. The architectural
design environmental problem is typically formulated as follows:
Energies 2022, 15, 4490. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15124490 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies