Abstract
The management of water consumption in healthcare centres can have positive impacts on both the environmental performance and profitability of health systems. Computational tools assist in the decision-making process of managing the operation and maintenance of healthcare centres. This research aimed to integrate the empirical knowledge of experts in Healthcare Engineering and the historical data from 66 healthcare centres in a Fuzzy Cognitive Map. The outputs of the predictive model included water consumption, water cost, and CO2 emissions in healthcare facilities, along with eleven variables to discover the causes and consequences of water consumption in healthcare centres. A healthcare centre with about 12 350 users, located in a city that experiences an average of 1100 heating degree days, whose facilities be moderately energy-efficient contributing over 50% with renewable energies is expected to consume 8.4 dam3 of water with 32.1 k€ of cost, and contribute realising 30.8 ton CO2eq emissions. The use of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps for prediction can provide a high level of effectiveness in identifying the factors that contribute to water consumption and in designing key performance indicators to manage the environmental performance of healthcare buildings. This tool is extremely effective in enhancing the performance of the management division of health systems.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the University of Evora (Portugal) for hosting part of this research during the research stay of author G. Sánchez-Barroso. This research was supported by European Regional Development Fund (No. GR18029 and No. GR21098) through VI Regional Plan for Research, Technical Development and Innovation from the Regional Government of Extremadura (2017–2020). Author G. Sánchez-Barroso was supported by a predoctoral fellowship (No. PD18047) from Regional Government of Extremadura and European Social Fund.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Gonzalo Sánchez-Barroso, Jaime González-Domínguez, Joao Paulo Almeida-Fernandes and Justo García-Sanz-Calcedo. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Gonzalo Sánchez-Barroso and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Sánchez-Barroso, G., González-Domínguez, J., Almeida-Fernandes, J.P. et al. A fuzzy cognitive map-based algorithm for predicting water consumption in Spanish healthcare centres. Build. Simul. 16, 2193–2205 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-023-1028-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-023-1028-y