Modeling the Effect of Building Stakeholder Interactions on Value Perception of Sustainable Retrofits

Abstract

AbstractAlignment among building stakeholders is necessary to ensure that sustainable retrofits achieve the purpose of maximizing economic, environmental, and social value of the building. However, dynamic stakeholder opinions and value maximization perceptions result in conflicting requirements that hinder the adoption of truly sustainable retrofit decision. This paper uses an agent-based model to understand how social network interactions can help stakeholders with different characteristics prioritize their values on cost awareness, energy saving, and organizational performance to ultimately come up with an optimal retrofit decision for a commercial office building. Experimental analysis is used to qualitatively validate the model against results from other studies in literature. The results indicate that highly connected network structures can facilitate the interaction between the stakeholders to achieve alignment. In addition, networks with highly confident stakeholders typically hinder agreement, wh...