Developing a gamified metaverse platform in adaptive reuse of heritage buildings in Hong Kong for enhancing public engagement and sustainable decision making

Abstract

The integration of metaverse into heritage building adaptive reuse presents a field rich with potential but also marked by critical research gap. These gaps encompass the scarcity of empirical evidence, interdisciplinary expert perspectives, and comprehensive exploration concerning key aspects such as enhancing public engagement and promoting sustainable decision-making in the context of digitally transformed historical building adaptive reuse. Hong Kong has long been committed to preserving and putting heritage buildings into good and innovative use. And a groundbreaking initiative, the “Revitalizing Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme” (“the Scheme”), was introduced in the 2007-08 Policy Address to enhance the revitalization of government-owned historic buildings. This study will be grounded in the current process of "the Scheme" in Hong Kong to develop a metaverse-based platform named "iHeritage" to enhance public engagement and enable sustainable decision-making. Through grounded theory analysis of expert opinions gathered via semi-structured interviews, this study firstly forms ideas on current public engagement practices within "the Scheme" and examines potential challenges and opportunities associated with integrating a metaverse platform, also with a special focus on sustainable design, operation, and user behaviour. Following the insights gathered from experts, "iHeritage" is developed encompassing functions such as historical building exploration, public feedback collection on present and future revitalization aspects, NPOs showcase, as well as future design presentations, with Guyuan Old Residence as the subject of the case study. Innovatively, a sustainability module is seamlessly integrated into "iHeritage" to facilitate informed public decision-making by considering the balance between building energy conservation and indoor environment quality, encompassing lighting visual comfort and thermal comfort. This integration goes beyond showcasing HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) and lighting designs for the case building; it also incorporates results from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations and building energy simulations, visually presenting energy consumption, carbon footprint data, and predictive thermal comfort based on the Predicted Mean Vote and Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PMV-PPD) model. These visualized data offer users a clearer and more intuitive understanding, aiding in enhanced decision-making capabilities. Finally, to evaluate the effectiveness of the "iHeritage" platform in enhancing public engagement and facilitating sustainable decision-making, a custom questionnaire, shaped by expert feedback and pilot testing, was designed. The structured experimental approach, incorporating pre-test and post-test questionnaires, revealed statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) in all engagement dimensions following platform usage, with the post-test mean (3.88) significantly surpassing the pre-test mean (2.44), which revealed the platform's positive impact on enhancing engagement. The experimental findings concerning sustainability indicated that furnishing thermal comfort and energy consumption information for varying temperature settings could potentially heighten individuals' propensity to make well-informed decisions, achieving an improved equilibrium between carbon footprint and thermal comfort. In conclusion, this thesis effectively bridges gaps in metaverse applications within heritage building conservation. The "iHeritage" platform not only addresses theoretical limitations but also provides practical tools for bolstering public engagement and sustainable decision-making in historical building revitalization, signifying a substantial contribution to the advancement of technology-driven heritage conservation practices.