Agri-food building performance evaluation by an integration of different measurement techniques: Case study of a bakery in south Italy

The performance of a building plays a key role in its sustainability, since a building cannot be sustainable if the needs of its users are not satisfied. In fact, the priority of a sustainable building is to meet the user requirements in an adequate manner, while limiting its environmental impact. The aim of this study is to supply a suitable Building Performance Evaluation method (BPE) to technicians, facility managers and designers, in order to improve the quality of management, design and construction by providing more sustainable agri-food buildings. In this study, in order to measure building performance with respect to user requirements, the simultaneous application of three different measurement techniques was proposed: a User survey by means of a questionnaire; an analysis of building documents and a walkthrough analysis by experts; and instrumental measurements and a direct survey of building characteristics. The proposed BPE method was based on a fuzzy weighted average at three levels. The fuzzy method proved to be particularly suitable for describing the vagueness of users when answering the questionnaire, for translating the document analysis, or considering the instrumental measurements for performance measures. The proposed method was applied to a typical agri-food building in southern Italy. This application demonstrated the correctness of the setting, its ease of application, and its ability to manage real cases. The method allowed for the evaluation of building performance by taking advantage of the positive characteristics of each measurement technique: the users’ and occupants’ perception, the knowledge and critical sense of expert technicians, and the accuracy and objectivity of instrumental measures. The results of the model were represented by mean fuzzy membership functions, which preserved the “vagueness” of the initial performance attributes. To obtain more synthetic values, a normalization procedure was applied to obtain a value performance judgment, expressed by a number in the range of 0 and 1 (where 0 is the worst and 1 is the best). The general performance of functional areas and the differences in performance in the same functional area were compared using this operation. The results of the case study demonstrated the reliability of the proposed method; in particular, it can determine the state of the building’s functionality, drawing attention to weak points that should be monitored to prevent potential faults. The method proposed is a key element intended to help develop agri-food buildings that are effective and efficient and perform as expected and it contributes to improve the general quality of agri-food buildings.