A systematic review of retrofitting tools for residential buildings

Retrofitting of existing buildings offers significant opportunities to reduce global energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is considered as one of the main approaches to achieve sustainability in the built environment at a relatively low cost. Although there is a wide range of retrofitting technologies available, methods to identify the most cost-effective measures for each project remain a major technical challenge. Numerous projects have been developed worldwide to face this challenge with different approaches; however, many of the tools meet only local objectives, which is why they are unknown in the international arena, showing a limited transfer of knowledge. This review organizes the results under three categories: renovation assessment, financial assessment, and transfer of knowledge. The tools focusing on promoting the renovation of buildings differ in the type of user, for example, the owners, politicians, or investors. The tools dealing with financial assessment suggest different methods to evaluate and calculate the cost savings, construction costs, and return forecasts through retrofit interventions. Other tools comply with the policies that seek to register, evaluate, and characterize the existing buildings. This review provides researchers, construction professionals, and politicians with a better understanding of the advances made to effectively design building retrofitting measures and promote energy conservation as well as the assessment of the building stock for the development of policies. The review shows that many tools have the potential of joining their capabilities, which can create many opportunities for innovation in the retrofitting area.