Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2.3 Assessment Methodologies
In the building retrofit, the assessment phase involves the evaluation of ECM or
retrofit actions versus the selected objective functions mentioned in Sect.
2.1
with
respect to logical, physical, and technical constraints concerning building retrofit
strategies.
Therefore, the assessment procedure is an iterative procedure influenced by the
objectives, the alternative actions, and set of constraints. This iterative procedure is
illustrated in Fig.
4
.
The methodologies for assisting decision making in the appraisal of retrofit
actions according to multiple, generally conflicting, and incommensurate evalua-
tion aspects may be distinguished into two main approaches (Fig.
5
), according to
the distinction made above of models in which alternatives are explicitly known a
priori and alternatives are implicitly defined in the setting of an optimization
model.
These approaches are subcategorized and analyzed in the following sections.
2.3.1 MCDA Approaches (Alternatives Explicitly Known a Priori)
In this category, there is a relatively small list of alternatives to choose from. In
general, an impact matrix is developed in close cooperation between the problem
owners and experts, which expresses in a given scale the performance of each
alternative for each evaluation criterion. Several methodological approaches may
then be used to combine this information with the DM's preferences in order to
reach a final recommendation that establishes a good compromise between the
evaluation criteria.
Multi-criteria Decision Analysis Approaches
Traditionally, the selection of energy alternatives and retrofit actions was based
only on cost optimization. The need to incorporate the environmental and social
impacts of different alternatives and viewpoints of different actors in the analysis
Fig. 4 The iterative decision
support process (Alanne
2004
)
estimate
performance
evaluate
Stop
(Proposal)
specify
objectives
generate
alternatives
