Elaboration of retrofit scenarios

Coherent and efficient retrofit scenarios are commonly built on the basis of the knowledge of the degradation state of the building and its obsolescence. The architect of building engineer prepares a list of refurbishment works required on the basis of the building audit, his experience and the available budget. This paper describes a systematic method, based on multicriteria analysis and a constructivist approach, which helps an expert in designing retrofit scenarios. This approach includes several steps and follows an iterative process. The associated computer tool takes charge of tedious tasks such as calculating the associated costs, performing an energy balance, and checking for coherence between actions; and presents various viewpoints to the expert. It also helps the user in quickly creating various scenarios. The expert can then interact with this information and makes the decision for selecting the final scenario. This interactive approach brings together expert intuition and rational systematic verification. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.