Data Envelopment Analysis and Analytics Software for Optimizing Building Energy Efficiency

Abstract

This research was motivated by the need to identify the most effective Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model and associated data analytics software for measuring, comparing, and optimizing building energy efficiency. By analyzing literature sources, the authors identified several gaps in the existing DEA approaches that were resolved in this research. In particular, the authors introduced energy efficiency indices like energy consumption per square foot and per occupant as a part of DEA models’ outputs. They also utilized inverse and min-max normalized output variables to resolve the issue of undesirable outputs in the DEA models. The evaluation of these models was done by utilizing various data analytics software including Python, R, Matlab, and Excel. The authors identified that the CCR DEA model with inverse output variables provided the most reliable energy efficiency scores, and the Python’s PyDEA package produces the most consistent efficiency scores while running the CCR model.