Heritage significance assessments to evaluate retrofit impacts

Heritage significance assessments to evaluate retrofit impacts: From heritage values to character-defining elements in praxis, by Carsten Hermann and Dennis Rodwell. Published in ‘How to assess built heritage? Assumptions, methodologies, examples of heritage assessment systems’, edited by Bogusaw Szmygin, published by the International Scientific Committee for Theory and Philosophy of Conservation and Restoration in 2015.

[edit] Abstract

Improving the energy performance of historic districts and their buildings is a balancing act between retaining their heritage significance and allowing the installation of retrofit measures. This paper describes a heritage impact assessment methodology to enable such a balancing process in a well-structured and systematic way. The methodology is one of six impact assessment modules for a decision support system, a software tool under development for the research project Energy Efficiency for EU Historic Districts’ Sustainability (EFFESUS). In this paper, the three parts of the methodology – the heritage significance evaluation, the heritage impact definitions and the heritage balancing process – are discussed and their use illustrated by two example case studies.

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