Risk Assessment of Prefabricated Buildings for Whole Life Cycle Based on Risk Matrix—VWAHP

With the transformation and upgrading of the traditional construction industry, prefabricated buildings have been applied more and more and become the driving force of modern building industrialization. At the same time, there are many risk factors in the whole life cycle including decision-making, design, transportation of PC components, construction and operation. Compared with traditional construction projects, prefabricated buildings require a higher level of expertise and management in addition to large scale and complexity. In addition, prefabricated buildings have a longer construction period and are prone to various risk factors in the whole life cycle. The risk assessment method of traditional buildings cannot be fully adapted to prefabricated buildings. While most of the existing research on risk of prefabricated building is one-sided, rarely considering the risk factors of the whole life cycle. Therefore, it is particularly important to build an objective and accurate risk assessment model. Based on the existing research on risk assessment of prefabricated buildings, a model of Variable Weight Analytic Hierarchy Process (VWAHP) with the risk matrix determining the index value is established in view of the whole life cycle and is applied to prefabricated buildings risk assessment. This paper establishes a risk evaluation index system based on the whole life cycle phase division of the prefabricated building project, then calculates the comprehensive risk score by using the model and finally carries on the concrete application research through the practical instance. The results show that, this model of Risk Matrix—VWAHP comprehensively takes into account the differences and impacts of various risk evaluation indexes, which avoids the shortcomings of traditional subjective analysis methods and makes the comprehensive risk assessment score more scientific and reasonable. The practical significance of this paper is to provide a basis and quantitative analysis method for the risk management and control of prefabricated buildings throughout whole life cycle, and to promote the sustainable development of prefabricated buildings and the reasonable risk control of decision makers.