Fuzzy rule based system approach to assess cleaning costs of carpet flooring

The impact of 'context of use' to the whole life costs (WLC) of building elements has not yet been studied in previous researches. Lack of hard and detailed historical data constrained the use of traditional methods for this purpose. A fuzzy rule-based system (FRBS) for any type of carpet cleaning cost estimate is one of a series of fuzzy models developed to estimate the WLC of building elements with the consideration of context of use to the elements. The fuzzy reasoning method, as the representation of human reasoning, is applied to WLC for the first time for carpet cleaning cost. The data used are the linguistic judgments from some experienced experts based on interview surveys. The implementation of the model is demonstrated in a case study. The result is assessed by the experts as an acceptable estimate.The paper concludes that Fuzzy Rule Based System is an appropriate method to model running costs of building elements. The model allows user to predict the cost variation of cleaning cost of carpet flooring according to its designed context of use.