Agent-Based Modeling of the Impact of Stakeholder Requirements on Sustainable Retrofit of Buildings

Abstract

This paper uses an agent-based model to illustrate how social networks and agent interactions can help stakeholders of an existing building prioritize their values of cost awareness, energy saving and organizational performance, to ultimately come up with an optimal building retrofit decision. The model is tested using a small-world network to see how the network structure affects the overall retrofit priority in a medium size building case study. The agents interact based on the bounded confidence model, which may result in continuous changes in their three values over time. The results indicate that although sustainable retrofits are generally decided on from economical and environmental perspectives, incorporating social values may help the owner choose an approach that can reduce energy consumption while maintaining tenant comfort and well being. Further, the time to reach convergence in values was highly dependent on the owner’s initial values and how extreme these were relative to the other stakeholders.