A role of cost modeler is that of facilitating design process by the systematic application of cost factors so as to maintain sensible and economic relationships between cost, quantity, utility and appearance. These relationships help to achieve the client's requirements within an agreed budget. The purpose of this study is to develop a parametric cost estimating model for the early design stage by using the multi-dimensional system of OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing) based on the case of quantity data related to architectural design features. The parametric cost estimating models have been adopted to support decision making in the early design stage. These models typically use a similar instance or a pattern of historical case. In order to effectively use this type of data model, it is required to set data classification and prediction methods. One of the methods is to find the similar class in line with attribute selection measure in the multi-dimensional data model. Therefore, this research is to analyze the relevance attribute influenced by architectural design features with the subject of case-based quantity data used for the parametric cost estimating model. The relevance attributes can be analyzed by Analytical Characterization. It helps determine what attributes to be included in the OLAP multi-dimension.
This research was supported by a grant (Assignment Number : 06 CIT A03) from the Construction Infra Technology Program funded by The Ministry of Land. Transport and Maritime Affairs and by a grant (Assignment Number : 2010-0025434) from National Research Foundation of Korea.