Assessing plans and programs for historic centers regeneration: An interactive multicriteria approach

The paper proposes a decision support system (DSS) for definition and implementation of complex policies for globally preserving and valorizing the cultural heritage, in a context of limited financing. The proposed methodology is inspired by the fundamentals of Goal Programming. The multiobjective decision problem is articulated into two phases: the first, aimed at allocating the public financial resources among different kinds of homogeneous actions; the second, aimed at selecting the punctual investments to be financed with the optimal resources assigned to each action during the first stage. In order to find the best compromise solutions, the original multiobjective problem is transformed into a monobjective constrained problem. For this purpose, phase 1 is supported by a linear programming model, while phase 2 by a binary one. The first and the latter are interactive DSS allowing to identify, through a series of iterative steps, the best compromise solution, if it exists. The proposed methodology is applied to a decision problem derived from the "Great Program for the Historic Center of Naples", launched by the Municipality in year 2007 with the aim of triggering a requalification process involving the whole historic center, enrolled in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1995. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.