Assessing building-level retrofit potential instantaneously and on a large scale
Research Team


Our Motivation:
"My experiences in the residential solar sector have showed me that effective building decarbonization efforts need to empower property owners to make sensible investment decisions. By identifying building-level retrofit potentials on a large scale, this research aims to facilitate the matchmaking between property owners and contractors/investors in the retrofit industry to help owners understand which retrofit investments should be considered."

Research Contribution
Provide a new methodology to bridge the gap between bottom-up and top-down building retrofit approaches.

Problem
Practical Problem
We are missing a method which can estimate building-level retrofit options fast, accurately, and on a large scale.
As a result, property owners are often unaware of their respective retrofit potential and contractors struggle to identify the most promising retrofit targets.
Conceptual Problem
Current retrofitting approaches are either detailed but local (bottom-up) or large-scale but coarse (top-down).

Solution
Explore the development of a scalable and data-driven solution to assess the retrofit potential of a building’s roof, walls, and windows solely based on publicly available data sources.

Added Value For The Industry
Demonstrate how publicly available data sources can be integrated to assess detailed building retrofit potential on a large scale.
Empower investors/contractors to approach owners proactively.

Timeline
Date |
Activity |
Outcome |
Summer 2022 |
Research became awarded: Assessing building-level retrofit potential instantaneously and on a large scale |
|
Fall 2022 |
Literature review |
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Data collection |
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Data cleaning |
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Model design |
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Winter 2023 |
Implement baseline and deep models |
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Conduct experiments |
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Spring + Summer 2023 |
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If you want to participate in the project please reach out to Kevin Mayer.