Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Computers and Information - Department of Operation Research and Decision Support

Sustainability development was first defined as development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs [1]. Since then sustainability has become widely applied specially when considering construction projects as a result of the huge leap in the global urbanization rates. Sustainability in construction projects was defined as building a healthy environment without wasting any resources such that all the resources are used efficiently and also not harming the community and the environment surrounding [2]. Researchers are continuously attempting to find accurate and reliable sustainability construction performance measures. However, most of these researches focus on studying sustainability in a single construction project, although it should be worthwhile studying sustainability in multiple construction projects in order to maximize the overall sustainability. In this work, a Simulation Optimization Framework that integrates Simulated Annealing (SA) and System Dynamics (SD) was developed for scheduling the different phases in their right sequence of multi-construction projects while maximizing the overall sustainability. This was done while assessing sustainability development and simulating the effect of external factors such as technological advancement and change in people{u2019}s perception on sustainability measures using Zhang et al{u2019}s [3] prototype System Dynamics (SD) model

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