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UPCHANGE Solution 7. Resilience Assessment Framework

· 3 min read
Matteo Spada
Matteo Spada
Zürich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Institute of Sustainable Development (INE)

The UPCHANGE project has reached an important milestone with the completion of the Resilience Assessment Framework for buildings and district heating and cooling (DH/DC), documented in the Deliverable D1.2 – Energy Flexibility and Resilience Framework. This work tackles a recurring gap in urban energy resilience practice. While building and DH/DC modelling tools have matured significantly, resilience assessments are still often difficult to compare across studies and rarely translate simulation outputs into decision-ready guidance. In particular, three limitations persist: multi-hazard coverage is uneven, resilience KPIs are fragmented and not consistently mapped to resilience phases, and the link from model outputs to prioritized actions is often missing.

To address these challenges, UPCHANGE provides a structured and traceable workflow that connects scenario design, physics-based simulation, harmonized KPI computation, and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) into one coherent pipeline, see Figure 1.

Resilience Framework Figure 1 UPCHANGE resilience assessment workflow linking scenario definition, simulation, KPI extraction, and MCDA aggregation into decision-oriented outputs.

  • Harmonized, computable KPIs mapped to resilience phases A compact KPI taxonomy is defined to work consistently across both buildings and DH/DC networks. KPIs are mapped to the four phases of the resilience curve: Pre-event, Absorb, Recovery, and Adapt. Importantly, they are designed to be directly computable from standard outputs of building energy simulations and thermo-hydraulic DH/DC simulations, supporting scalability and transferability across districts and cities.

  • Reproducible multi-hazard scenario specification To enable comparable stress-testing, the framework introduces a transparent method to generate baseline and extreme meteorological boundary conditions and to define disruption triggers. Weather inputs are handled via EPW-based workflows, while disruptions such as blackouts and hardware or control failures are encoded as time-based trigger schedules. This supports both single-stressor and combined scenario analysis under consistent assumptions.

  • Traceable model-to-KPI-to-MCDA decision synthesis The framework formalizes KPI extraction and post-processing, including normalization and aggregation rules with explicit assumptions and reporting conventions. An MCDA layer based on weighted-sum aggregation translates heterogeneous KPI evidence into decision-oriented outputs. When stakeholder weight elicitation is not yet available, preference uncertainty can be represented through stochastic weighting to produce acceptability profiles, enabling robust discussion of trade-offs rather than relying on a single deterministic ranking. By combining multi-hazard scenario breadth, a harmonized KPI taxonomy, and transparent MCDA aggregation, the UPCHANGE Resilience Assessment Framework helps move resilience analysis from isolated demonstrations to reproducible, comparable, and decision-relevant assessments for coupled building and DH/DC systems.