Maintenance, Retrofit and Operation Decision Support Tool for Both Domestic and Non-Domestic Buildings

There is great potential for novel decision support tools to aid in the provision of tailored advice for both domestic and non-domestic buildings. The method described in this paper will rely on a combination of data from BIM - monitoring technologies such as smart sensors and performance-based analysis, user behaviour, and expert knowledge - for the development of a decision support tool for maintenance, retrofit and operation. It will present the concepts and research work behind the development of a novel tool to automatically generate maintenance and retrofit advice at different levels of abstraction, taking into consideration the requirements of different stakeholders, building performance analysis (BPA), standards guidelines and regulations. Design4Energy (D4E) EU project engaged into the development of an optimised design methodology which uses a decision-making tool based on expertise from a combination of different subject fields feed into a statistical model. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is adopted for the development of the tool as it uses priority theory which decomposes any complex multi-dimensional decision-making problem into a system of hierarchies. This looks into the historic type of experiences while predicting the future building performance and takes into account the operation scenarios and maintenance activities. It logically incorporates data and expert's judgement in the model to identify criteria to enables decision making.