Knowledge informed decision making in the building lifecycle: An application to the design of a water drainage system

Critical decisions which influence the sustainability of a construction project are made in a pressurised, time-critical environment. These decisions must be supported and informed by knowledge resources, with the reasons for these decisions feeding back into the body of knowledge. This paper reports on a research initiative which brings together a knowledge management environment and a decision support tool, bringing sustainability knowledge management into the applications used in architectural design. Validation of the resulting knowledge informed decision making environment emphasised the potential benefits that such environments can bring in assisting decision making by capitalizing on the wealth of existing related knowledge.