A decision support model for improving a multi-family housing complex based on CO ₂ emission from gas energy consumption

Improvement of residential environments has recently been promoted by the Korean government as part of its energy-saving measures. The objective of this research is to develop a decision support model for selecting the multi-family housing complex with the potential to be effective in saving energy. In this research, 362 cases of multi-family housings located in Seoul were selected to collect characteristics and data on gas energy consumption from 2009 to 2010. The following were carried out: (i) using the Decision Tree, a group of multi-family housings was established based on gas energy consumption; (ii)using case-based reasoning, a number of similar multi-family housings were retrieved from the same group of multi-family housings; and (iii) using a combination of genetic algorithms, artificial neural network, and multiple regression analysis, prediction accuracy was improved. The results of this research can be useful in the following: (i) preliminary research for continuously managing the gas energy consumption of multi-family housings; (ii) basic research for predicting gas energy consumption based on the characteristics of multi-family housings; and (iii) practical research for selecting an optimum multi-family housing complex (with the potential to be effective in saving gas energy), which can make the application of an energy-saving program more effective as a decision support model.