Resource efficiency in abandoned heritage buildings A review of reuse strategies and decision support methods

Redeveloping underutilized building stock presents an opportunity to recover and reuse the residual value and utility of existing resources, thereby advancing resource efficiency and promoting circular economy in the built environment. Adaptive reuse is effective for extending building life but often fails in the case of abandoned vernacular buildings facing socio-spatial decline. To harvest this opportunity, a holistic reuse strategy is required. This study employs a multi-literature review to identify such a strategy. Initially, it explores resource-efficient approaches in vernacular wooden heritage buildings and develops a conceptual scheme through snowballing. Subsequently, a systematic review of 82 articles from the past 25 years, using data from Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, identifies methodologies, indicators, challenges, and future directions. The systematic review reveals that reuse decision-making in buildings is often limited to the choice between building upgrading and demolition, overlooking other potential solutions. However, integrating three reuse strategies: adaptive reuse, building relocation, and controlled deconstruction, can enhance resource efficiency by reducing the risk of demolition. Furthermore, the corresponding reuse assessment methodologies and indicators often overlap across strategies, particularly in technology use, and performance assessments, while some remain distinct to one strategy. A hierarchical and holistic reuse decision-making framework is deduced, comprising and providing details on four consecutive steps: preliminary studies, planning, managing, and implementing the intervention. This framework promotes an effective and resource-efficient approach to conserving existing building stock by moving beyond the dominant single-strategy reuse model. It recommends the integration of multilevel and sequential reuse thinking into building design practices and policy development. Further research should explore the practical implications and applications of the proposed framework. • Redeveloping abandoned heritage buildings promotes Heritage Conservation & a Circular Economy. • Adaptive reuse often fails for abandoned buildings experiencing socio-spatial decline. • Nine decision-making categories and 102 decision indicators for reuse assessment are identified. • Kye limits include single-reuse bias and scares relocation research, plus technical, policy, and data barriers. • A hierarchical reuse decision-making framework for abandoned buildings is proposed.