Annibaldi, Cucchiella, De Berardinis, Gastaldi and Rotilio (Journal of Cleaner Production 251, 2020) proposed a five-step methodology for selecting energy-efficiency interventions on historic buildings: assessment of a façade's elements of heritage value and its level of transformability, selection of candidate insulating materials, dynamic simulation of heating and cooling behaviour, intervention cost analysis per insulation type, and a multi-criteria matrix ranking the retrofit options for a historic wall at differing transformability levels. The methodology was validated on a single building aggregate in the Province of L'Aquila, Italy, and the authors posed an explicit research agenda: test its applicability to other historic buildings, regions, and climate zones; incorporate financial incentives and building use into the cost-benefit balance; extend it to renewable-energy integration, moisture-risk assessment, and indoor comfort over the full annual cycle; apply it to post-earthquake reconstruction in central Italy; and develop a standardized, user-friendly decision-support tool based on the multi-criteria matrix. No published replication or transferability test of the full methodology was identified: it remains a single-case decision aid, while adjacent multi-criteria heritage-retrofit frameworks developed in parallel leave its transferability untested; the post-earthquake direction was partially explored by two of the authors for the city of L'Aquila (Rotilio and Annibaldi, 2021) using the value/transformability analysis, but the full multi-criteria matrix has not been applied there or elsewhere. The problem — establishing whether this integrated methodology is transferable across heritage buildings, regions, and climates, with extended decision criteria and toward a standardized practitioner-usable tool — remains open.

Background

Historic (heritage) buildings account for a large share of the European building stock, and improving their energy efficiency is difficult because interventions must respect original materials, construction techniques, and cultural value. In Italy this tension is acute: external insulation of a protected façade may be prohibited, while internal insulation reduces floor area and can create moisture problems in massive masonry walls. The paper that poses this problem (Annibaldi, Cucchiella, De Berardinis, Gastaldi and Rotilio, Journal of Cleaner Production 251, 2020, article 119516) contributes to Sustainable Development Goal 7 (affordable and clean energy) a decision methodology whose key concept is transformability: a preliminary analysis grades how far each part of a historic façade can be altered — for example by accepting external or internal insulation — without compromising its heritage value. The methodology then proceeds in five steps: (1) identification of the elements of value and the transformability level of the façade; (2) selection of candidate insulating materials; (3) dynamic simulation, i.e. hour-by-hour physics-based computation of the building's heating and cooling demand over a reference year (as opposed to steady-state calculation), here comparing internal, external, and thin high-performance insulation options; (4) analysis of intervention costs for each insulation type, including installation and disposal; and (5) construction of a multi-criteria matrix — a table scoring each retrofit option against energy, cost, and conservation criteria — to identify the most effective energy-efficiency improvement of a historic wall at each level of transformability. The framework was applied to a single building aggregate in the Province of L'Aquila, Italy, a region also marked by the 2009 earthquake, which motivated the authors' interest in reconstruction. The authors state the agenda that defines this problem: the methodology's broader applicability to other historic buildings, regions, and climate zones remains to be tested; future work should incorporate energy-related financial incentives (tax credits, subsidies) and building use (residential, commercial, mixed), which alter the cost-benefit balance; the methodology could be extended to renewable-energy integration, moisture-risk (hygrothermal) assessment, and the impact of interventions on indoor comfort over the full annual cycle; its application to post-earthquake reconstruction in central Italy warrants investigation; and a standardized, user-friendly decision-support tool based on the multi-criteria matrix would enable adoption by practitioners. The surrounding research field is active: parallel multi-criteria decision-making approaches for heritage retrofit exist — for example Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) frameworks, which rank intervention alternatives by pairwise comparison of weighted criteria — and reviews of whole-building dynamic simulation of historical buildings (Verticchio et al., 2024) document that modelling practice remains case-specific and poorly standardized. None of this parallel work, however, tests whether the specific integrated methodology of Annibaldi et al. transfers beyond its single validation case.

Problem Statement

Establish whether the integrated five-step methodology of Annibaldi et al. (2020) for conservation-compatible energy retrofit of heritage-building envelopes is transferable beyond its single validation case, and, on that basis, advance its development toward a validated, general decision methodology. Concretely, the research agenda recorded for this problem identifies the following directions: (a) apply and test the methodology — preliminary analysis of a façade's elements of value and transformability level, selection of insulating materials, dynamic simulation of heating and cooling behaviour, intervention cost analysis, and the multi-criteria matrix ranking retrofit options for historic walls at differing transformability levels — on historic buildings other than the L'Aquila case study, in other regions and climate zones; (b) extend the cost-benefit core of the matrix with the factors the source omitted: existing energy-related financial incentives (tax credits, subsidies) and building use (residential, commercial, mixed); (c) extend the evaluation to renewable-energy integration, moisture-risk assessment, and the impact of interventions on indoor comfort over the full annual cycle; (d) extend the approach to post-earthquake reconstruction in central Italy, where rebuilding offers the opportunity to embed energy efficiency into historic fabric — building on Rotilio and Annibaldi (2021), who applied an adapted value/transformability analysis at the city scale of L'Aquila but not the full five-step matrix; and (e) develop a standardized, user-friendly decision-support tool based on the multi-criteria matrix usable by practitioners and stakeholders. These directions share one scientific objective: determining whether and how a single-case decision aid can become a validated, transferable, standardized decision methodology for energy-efficient retrofit of heritage buildings. Establishing transferability requires applying the five-step methodology to at least one historic building other than the L'Aquila case study, in a different region or climate zone (direction (a)), which both determines its transferability and advances it toward a general methodology; directions (b)–(e) concern further extensions of the methodology, and the sub-topics listed within them — such as the three in (c) — are alternative foci.

References

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