Energy efficient urban districts: A multi-criteria application for selecting retrofit actions

The definition of the new paradigm for transition strategies toward sustainable development and low-carbon cities is crucial, mainly, in the built environment sector which is the key driver of energy consumption and carbon emission. Starting from the energy characterization of the urban environment, the paper proposes a multi-criteria decision aiding model as a support tool for promoting the energy retrofitting of urban districts. The PROMETHEE methodology has been applied to a case study in the city of Torino for outranking five different proposed alternatives for buildings refurbishment that allows to achieve 20% energy saving. Three main phases characterize the study: i. analysis of the buildings stock and alternatives identification; ii. criteria definition and quantification; iii. model implementation and result discussion. The model fits well the purpose of the analysis and highlights that Multi-Criteria Decision methods can provide relevant feedbacks and considerable help to building designers, planners and decision makers for ranking complex design energy options and select the most energy savings retrofitting scenario