The Spatial Well-Being Index (SWBI): A Theoretical Framework for Detecting Hidden Deficits in Indoor Building Quality Assessment

The built environment shapes human neuroendocrine regulation through identifiable pathways, yet composite indicators typically aggregate criteria through compensatory functions that allow strong performance on some criteria to arithmetically offset severe deficits on others, producing a hidden deficit that can mislead the decision-maker it is meant to inform. This paper contributes a non-compensatory aggregation framework for multi-criteria composite indicators, designed to detect such hidden deficits through three complementary mechanisms: a dominance ceiling, a criterion-level veto constraint preventing severe, acute-impact deficits from being arithmetically absorbed by favorable conditions elsewhere; certainty tiers, which render visible, criterion by criterion, the strength of evidence underlying each weight; and evidence-informed weighted geometric aggregation, ensuring that deficits accumulate rather than average out. As a worked illustration, the framework is instantiated as the Spatial Well-Being Index (SWBI), a fourteen-criterion index evaluating the objective quality of indoor living and working environments. Applied to an open-plan office, the compensatory composite alone yields a score of 34.0 (Critical) — a score that already conceals a hidden deficit — but the binding dominance ceiling, triggered by excessive background noise, detects and exposes it, lowering the reported score to 20.0 (Harmful). The framework is presented as a methodological contribution to multi-criteria decision analysis rather than a validated measurement instrument, offering a transparent, reproducible, criterion-veto-compatible aggregation logic transferable to other multi-criteria decision problems facing the same compensatory-masking problem. Note: SWBI is a renamed and substantially revised evolution of an earlier framework by the same author (previously titled IHM), reflecting a change in scope, terminology, and formulation; it should be treated as a distinct work.