Sensitivity analysis and multi-objective optimization of rural housing envelope

In rural areas, the retrofitting of housing should be tailored to local characteristics due to the presence of numerous uncertain parameters. By employing sensitivity analysis (SA) on these parameters and multi-objective optimization (MOO), an appropriate reconstruction scheme for rural areas can be identified. Therefore, the objective of this article is to mitigate energy consumption and discomfort hours through envelope retrofitting in rural houses. Firstly, a SA is conducted on uncertainty parameters and envelope design variables in the process of retrofitting rural residential building to determine the parameters and design variables that have a significant impact on building performance. Secondly, the Pareto frontier is obtained by applying MOO using genetic algorithm (GA) to the envelope design variables. Finally, TOPSIS method is used to transform the multi-objective problem into a single objective, leading to identification of an optimal solution. The results show that this method can effectively obtain the optimal combination to achieve the goal.