To address the inadequacies of similar publications on decision-making techniques for construction, this book is intended to serve as both a reference and text book for undergraduate and graduate students in construction. Further, this book is illustrated with practical examples that facilitate practitioners and readers in understanding these quantitative tools for applying them to solve real-life practical problems.

The modern decision-making techniques contained in this book include Multi-criteria Decision-making Models that embrace Analytic Hierarchy Process, Non-structural Fuzzy Decision Support System, ELECTRE III and SIR Methods; Artificial Neural Networks that consist of different architectures such as Back propagation network, General Regression Neural Network, Probabilistic Neural Network and Group Method of Data Handling; Genetic Algorithms; Construction Simulation; Rough Set Theory; and Advanced Statistical Techniques.

This book also provides some good materials for research students in understanding the research methodology which has become more and more quantitative in nature in the recent years. We hope readers will find this book useful.

C. M. TAM
Thomas K. L. TONG
H. ZHANG
May 2007