Optimisation Techniques for Climate-Responsive and Carbon-Neutral Building Retrofit Design

The building sector is extensively responsible for climate change, contributing to carbon emissions while also being vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. While climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies have been developed for new constructions, existing building stocks encounter challenges. Carbon–neutral retrofit is a strategy to balance the energy efficiency objectives of retrofit and the mitigation of the carbon footprint of existing buildings, ensuring sustainable and efficient building performance in the long term. Achieving optimal carbon–neutral retrofit solutions requires addressing multiple complex objectives, including environmental impact, cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency. Optimisation techniques offer solutions to achieve optimum outcomes through automating complex decision-making processes. This study explores the potential of optimisation techniques in overcoming the challenge of achieving the conflicting optimum objectives of climate-resilient and carbon–neutral retrofit design.