Building retrofit optimization has gained increasing attention as a pathway to improve energy performance and support sustainability. This review examines 162 studies and synthesizes simulation-based (SBMOO) and metamodel-based (MBMOO) multi-objective optimization techniques for building retrofit across climatic conditions. The review also analyzes passive, active, and combined retrofit strategies and evaluates how climatic context influences their suitability and performance. Passive strategies typically involve envelope- or material-related upgrades, whereas active strategies focus on building systems. Energy efficiency, comfort, cost-effectiveness, and environmental impact are identified as the major performance metrics for retrofit evaluation. Sustainability metric such as life cycle assessment (LCA) has yet to be used adequately to evaluate retrofit measures, while social objectives are also less explored. SBMOO provides robust optimization but can be computationally intensive, whereas MBMOO improves computational efficiency through surrogate modeling but depends strongly on dataset quality, sampling strategy, and surrogate model selection. In contrast to earlier reviews that usually emphasize either optimization techniques or retrofit measures independently, this study integrates optimization pathway comparison with climate-based analysis of retrofit strategies. The review also finds that most studies are highly case-specific, limiting transferability across climates, building types, and retrofit contexts. Therefore, this work proposes a synthesized framework to support structured selection of baseline modeling and optimization pathways for future retrofit studies. Overall, the review identifies current methodological trends, key research gaps, and future directions for more consistent and climate responsive retrofit decision-making.
Reza-E-Rabbi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.