Fourth International Conference on Construction in the 21 st Century (CITC-IV) “Accelerating Innovation in Engineering, Management and Technology” July 11-13, 2007, Gold Coast, Australia An Artificial Neural Network Approach in Service Life Prediction of Building Components in Malaysia Based on Local Environment and Building Service Load Siti Hamisah Tapsir Professor, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Malaysia Jamaludin Mohd. Yatim Associate Professor, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Malaysia Fathoni Usman PhD Student, Sustainable Construction Research Group, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia City Campus, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Abstract The degradation of building and its components are influenced by whole set of factors such as environmental degradation agents, quality of material, protective treatment, design of building, quality of work and maintenance. Selection of suitable materials for the building components can prolong the service life of particular building components and in certain cases require less maintenance and replacement activity. Emphasis on material characterisations at the design stage is limited because most of the time great emphasis is given on delivering with lowest initial building cost rather than lowest life cycle cost. In this study, an artificial neural network is used to predict the service life of building materials with the basis study on deterioration of building components affected by its surrounding environment and factors that accelerate its aging process. The advantages of artificial neural network is employing as a prediction tool. The back-propagation learning algorithm is used as learning model. The environment load factors, workmanship, design, usage and level of maintenance are used as input variables in training process of the neural network model. The results are encouraging and potentially useful for further application of the service life prediction. Keywords Service Life Prediction, Artificial Neural Network, Degradation, Environment, Building Service Load 1. Introduction Demands for low cost housing provided by the government are increasing every year. The increase of demands is triggered by migration of population from urban areas to rural and industrial cities. From the first Malaysia Plan that was implemented in 1966 the first formal and structured housing programs have been undertaken to provide low cost housing. Multi-million-ringgit has invested in providing low cost multi storey housing. However, the maintenance cost of these low cost housings is imposing great burden to the government due to financial constraint. With little attention paid on what happen during the building’s life span, it is not surprising that most public housing management faces lack of funding for operational, maintenance and replacement of building components. Expenses and care during the life span brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Institutional Repository