Sustainability Multi-Criteria Analysis Method – Real Estate Assessment Tool for a Sustainable Refurbishment

Tools to measure and assess sustainability of buildings are becoming every day more important, especially in Europe where Real Estate is characterized by a great amount of buildings constructed more or less in the sixties, with really low performances. Researches prove that refurbishment interventions simply improving performances of the built environment do not guarantee sustainable results. This work aim to create a multi-criteria design method able to collect all the existent instruments for sustainability assessment from the Environmental, Economic and Social point of view, as written in the definition of sustainability in the EN 15643 (2011), and to apply it to refurbishment of existing buildings. Measurements of sustainability of project alternatives are currently made by the evaluation, using the correct instruments, of some parameters, according to the existing legislation. The output of this system, obtained combining the above-mentioned parameters, is a ranking of the most sustainable project alternatives, with the purpose to help the designer in the selection of the most suitable one. The method, called SMCAM, is created in a way that allows evaluating interventions on construction, on services and on any combination of those, to get the best solution. The method is inspired by the existent AHP comparison method and includes a weighting system able to weight all the entities of the hierarchic scale of sustainability. The SMCAM method has been applied to two case studies appositely selected: an existent university building in Milan (which is the case study of this proceeding), and a new construction building, designated to be an hospital and situated in the South of France.