Analysis of relationship between costs of Built-in security components and some Physical characteristics of buildings in Nigeria: Case studies of Abuja and Minna

Abstract

The development of houses for human residence, commercial and other types of buildings have responded to the need to fortify them to forestall the commitment of crimes. However, private individuals express their security concerns through the provision of built-in security components in their houses. This paper aimed at determining the relationships that exist between some physical characteristics of buildings and the costs of providing security in building projects. The study intends to achieve this by determining the relationships that exist between the total costs of built-in security components and physical characteristics of building. Further objectives are to derive the line or curve that best fit the relationship. The paper employs a survey approach by utilizing a data collection proforma to capture eighteen (18) different variables spread over various elements in building and security components. Only the analysis that tested the influence of numbers of external openings returned a statistically significant result (R2 =13.3%, P0.05 = 0.01). the study concluded that, the number of external openings might warrant further investigation as a possible variable to be used to predict the total cost of built-in items of security. The paper recommended that other statistical techniques in conjunction with regression analysis should be used in order to develop a statistical model to predict costs of built-in security items.