Dynamic performance assessment of historic public assembly buildings using system dynamics

Purpose Historical structures are representations of a nation's cultural and architectural heritage, yet most were built in eras when modern energy efficiency, occupant comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ) were not prioritized in building design. Such challenges are intensified in naturally ventilated public assembly structures where climatic variations and intermittent high-occupancy events create substantial temporal variations. Design/methodology/approach This study presents a holistic framework for evaluating the hourly performance of naturally ventilated public assembly buildings over a year. The building behavior is represented by combining hourly values of key performance indicators (KPIs), extracted from a Building Information Modeling model, into a system dynamics model that simulates cumulative effects and cause-and-effect relationships. The outputs are aggregated into an hourly Building Performance Index. The chosen approach adopts a dynamic weighting strategy built upon a hybrid analytic hierarchy process–entropy baseline weighting scheme. Adaptive monthly adjustments informed by variability in performance KPIs as well as seasonal and occupancy-related adjustments are applied. Findings The results demonstrate that static weighting scenarios tend to smooth temporal variability and mask critical operational periods, while dynamic scenarios reveal pronounced performance degradation during high-stress conditions. Although the studied mosque's energy subsystem shows strong seasonal performance due to natural ventilation, it experiences pronounced hourly drops during peak-use periods; the IAQ subsystem remains structurally stable due to the mosque's architectural properties and occupant comfort constitutes the weakest and most event-sensitive module. Originality/value Integrating system dynamics modeling with adaptive weighting strategies captures the changing importance of performance criteria over time to identify critical operational vulnerability periods that may remain concealed in conventional static assessments. The proposed framework provides an exploratory, feedback-driven tool helping stakeholders with realistic, policy-oriented performance assessment.