Transfer of building retrofitting evaluations for data-scarce conditions: An empirical study for Sweden to China

Evaluating and comparing the performances of different strategies is critical for energy-efficient building retrofitting. Data-driven modelling based on large building performance datasets is an effective method for such evaluations. However, it could be challenging to apply this approach to buildings from data-scarce areas where local building performance datasets have not been well-established, which means the data falls short of the high demand for building retrofitting on a global level. To address this, a transfer learning approach is proposed in this study that can evaluate the performance of buildings without local well-established building performance datasets. The proposed approach is applied in the Swedish-Chinese empirical study that relies on the Swedish dataset to transfer and predict the building performance in China without well-established datasets. It was achieved by applying fuzzy C-means clustering and a neural network (FCM-BRBNN) to pre-train the evaluation model based on the Swedish dataset. Then, the proposed approach collects a small sample of Chinese buildings in the data-scarce area and transfers the model to local building performance prediction. The results show that the transfer learning approach can reliably predict the performance of building retrofitting in data-scarce areas with only hundreds of local building samples. As such, this study provides a novel methodology that can support the evaluation and comparison of retrofitting strategies in data-scarce regions and countries with only limited local data. It could efficiently assist designers in optimizing energy-efficient designs in the pre-retrofit stage. Crucially, the methodology enables the transfer of knowledge regarding building performance across different countries and regions, being pivotal for the international collaboration required to stimulate the global energy-efficiency transformation.