Abstract
The energy consumption of fully glazed office buildings is very high due to the heavy cooling loads in summer. Therefore, building designers resort to the High-Performance Glazing System (HPGS) solutions to reduce solar heat gain and save energy. However, the selection of most sustainable HPGS is considered a complicated process because the one criterion decision method - which building designers still tend to use - cannot solve this complexity. Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) analysis can solve this problem and rank the alternatives. In this paper, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) - one of the MCDM methods - is applied by SuperDecisions software to rank three proposed HPGS alternatives for an existing office building in New Cairo, Egypt as a case study in a hot desert climate zone. Four criteria of sustainability (energy, environmental impacts, cost, and occupant comfort) are assessed and a new weighting method is applied based on LEED rating system to prioritize the alternatives. The ranking results show in the first place the Photovoltaic glazing system followed by the Low-E and Electrochromic glazing systems, respectively with a negligible difference. The Life cycle cost criterion is the major influencer on the ranking results according to the applied sensitivity analysis.