Energies, Vol. 18, Pages 5421: A Data-Driven Decision-Making Tool for Prioritizing Resilience Strategies in Cold-Climate Urban Neighborhoods
Energies doi: 10.3390/en18205421
Authors:
Ahmed Nouby Mohamed Hassan
Caroline Hachem-Vermette
Cold-climate urban neighborhoods face mounting energy and thermal risks from extreme weather and power outages, creating trade-offs between different resilience capacities and objectives. This study develops a scalable, data-driven decision-making tool to support early-stage prioritization of resilience strategies at both the building component and neighborhood levels. A database of 48 active and passive strategies was systematically linked to 14 resilience objectives, reflecting energy- and thermally oriented capacities. Each strategy–objective pair was qualitatively assessed through a literature review and translated into probability distributions. Monte Carlo simulations (10,000 iterations) were performed to generate possible outcomes and several scores were calculated. Comparative scenario analysis—spanning holistic, short-term, long-term, energy-oriented, and thermally oriented perspectives—highlighted distinct adoption patterns. Active energy strategies, such as ESS, decentralized RES, microgrids, and CHP, consistently achieved the highest adoption (A) scores across levels and scenarios. Several passive measures, including green roofs, natural ventilation with passive heat recovery, and responsive glazing, also demonstrated strong multi-objective performance and outage resilience. A case study application integrated stakeholder-specific objective weightings, revealing convergent strategies suitable for immediate adoption and divergent ones requiring negotiation. This tool provides an adaptable probabilistic foundation for evaluating resilience strategies under uncertainty.