الفهرس 
Façade Retrofitting of Office BuildingsOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Buildings are responsible for almost half of total energy consumption because of the excessive use of cooling, heating, and ventilation. However, new construction adds annually from 1% to 3% to the existing stock, the other 99% of buildings are already built. Furthermore, At the age of 30 to 40 years, facades reached the end of their technical life span and these existing buildings have been recognized as an inefficient consumer of costs. Therefore, retrofitting existing buildings became a necessary shifting focus as it can be more cost-effective than building a new facility. Doing so will mean that the building will increase in value and last longer.
More than 40 Egyptian governmental office buildings and ministerial authorities would be immigrated and vacated because of the relocation to the New Administrative Capital City. This constitutes a strong potential for the research problem and is compatible with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Egypt Vision 2030.
Despite there are many studies that discussed the research field in practicability, there are no results that investigated frameworks in aspects related to facades of office buildings in hot arid climates. So, the research aimed to achieve this goal by developing a proposed conceptual framework for retrofitting the office building facades. To achieve this aim, research has been reviewed, categorized, and analysed in a qualitative approach. Through literature review, the research offered a comprehensive overview of the sustainable retrofitting concept, especially in the facades of existing office buildings. The retrofitting measures and main challenges such as the decision-making process of the optimal solution were introduced. Also, literature discussing frameworks and office building retrofitting was analysed.
The concluded proposed framework has come out to be incorporated into an office facade retrofitting plan for achieving efficient sustainability. It consisted of six phases; project setup and pre-retrofitting planning, compromising an energy audit, identification of alternatives, site implementation and commissioning, validation, and verification, and finally operation and maintenance.
The 3rd phase of the framework was verified through an experimental approach by implementing it on an existing applied case study to evaluate
the possibility of its application. A governmental office building in Cairo was chosen as a representative of a typical office building in the hot arid climate built in the last 30 years and requires energy façade retrofits. DesignBuilder software and Energy Plus simulation with sensitivity analysis (SA) and Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO) were used in the simulation process as a decision-support approach that used a genetic algorithm to help in selection of the optimal combinations of variables.
The research concluded underlining the significance of using building performance simulation (BPS) tools in help designers and owners to determine the optimal alternatives in the retrofitting process. Also, the research concluded by helping to understand the potential of existing buildings by incorporating a facade retrofitting framework for energy conservation and sustainability and seeking to fill the gaps in retrofitting practicability knowledge. It would support the designers in creating an action plan for retrofitting office buildings while considering the diverse and conflicting requirements of stakeholders to choose the most appropriate design options for retrofitting.