Reno-DM: A Knowledge model to support the decision-making process in the context of residential building renovation projects

Abstract

The decision-making process to select solutions in residential building renovation projects is a complex task. These projects encounter rigid governance and ownership structures, participation of multiple stakeholders, diverse requirements, and a lack of consensus regarding methodologies and tools used within the decision-making process. Addressing some of these challenges requires a shared understanding of this domain. Therefore, this paper presents the Renovation-Decision-making (Reno-DM) model mapping key knowledge from the decision-making in renovation projects. It considers project characteristics, context information, building features, and their relation to aspects of the decision-making itself. The development of the Reno-DM model relies on an existing decision-making representation and the extraction of new concepts from interviews with stakeholders taking part in renovation projects and related literature. The interviews are analysed following an inductive content analysis approach. The Reno-DM model is developed in the form of an ontology. It provides a basis from which future knowledge management and reuse applications can be developed and deployed to support improvements in the decision-making process in the renovation field.