Large-scale school building infrastructure improvement: The case of the city of Cali, Colombia

Quality education is influenced by various factors, including infrastructure, curricula, and educators. Among these factors, school infrastructure significantly impacts the learning process. However, managing and improving existing school infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries presents complex challenges due to limited resources, inadequate regulations, and poor maintenance practices. To effectively prioritize limited funds and balance short-term needs with long-term sustainability, decision-making processes must consider simultaneously functionality and safety aspects. This paper introduces an extended decision-making framework for enhancing school buildings, by determining optimal investment levels and prioritizing interventions in the building portfolio. The framework comprises multiple analytic models that are interconnected. The methodology starts with the identification of building typologies using a clustering algorithm; then, through a multi-criteria utility function with parametrized decision-maker profiles, it considers the trade-offs between safety and functionality; last, an optimization model prioritizes the buildings’ interventions. The framework is adapted to a regional context in the city of Cali (Colombia). The outcome of this implementation provides analytics to decision-makers at an early stage in the formulation of school building improvement programs. This helps unveiling the extent of the project by defining the needs of improvement and the budget required to implement a large-scale intervention program.