Multi-criteria analysis of buildings transformation potential in planning and design

A large part of the existing building stock in Europe was built before 1980 and is now facing significant renovation and energy-related optimisations, which are focus areas in political initiatives such as the EU's new Green Deal and Renovation Wave. However, not all buildings can be used for the same purposes as when they were built. This raises the question of what can be transformed and what needs to be demolished. The motivation is to reuse as many existing structures as possible to decrease the need for new materials, as well as waste from components and materials removed from the buildings. However, decisions on whether to transform or renovate need to be based on good-quality information and data during planning and design in order to choose the design strategies that provide the building owner with value and motivation. In the following, a method for providing information about the transformation potential is described, developed and tested in the framework of CIRCuIT, an EU Horizon programme project. The transformation potential tool identifies the twenty most used indicators for assessing transformation and flexibility. These are then evaluated through case studies of existing buildings. The results shows that the differences between using the twenty most recognized indicators and a broader set of 64 indicators is small, which shows that it is possible to make timely and cost-effective visualizations of the transformation potential for buildings that can be used as a basis for decision-making in the early planning phases.