No abstract

Urban regeneration has to be based on rigorous methodological frameworks able to find a balance among preservation instances, economic development, urban quality and the well-being of the population. Considering these premises, this research is focused on the definition of the decision-aiding process for the reuse of an abandoned health care facility with several historic buildings. Both public and private interests have been taken into consideration, since they play an important role for the urban regeneration project and for the definition of urban regeneration policies. Given the complexity of this issue, the evaluation process has been structured by combining different methodologies to support the policy cycle: Stakeholder Analysis, to identify the actors engaged (Social sustainability); Nara Grid for the values elicitation of the Built Cultural Heritage (Cultural and environmental sustainability); and the subsequent definition of different sustainable scenarios evaluated by the Discounted Cash Flow Analysis (Economic sustainability). Four alternatives have been assessed with the support of a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) aimed at defining the most balanced one considering heritage significance retention and urban regeneration. This work contributes to the literature on soft OR by exploring interactions among different stakeholders and addresses policy instances by providing a transparent methodology based on value elicitation.

Cultural heritage can play a strategic role in developing a sustainable built environment, contributing to the improvement of the economic, social, and environmental productivity of a city. Human activities are constantly affecting the quality of the environment and altering the ecosystems, which produce negative consequences also on human wellbeing. Within this context, it has been much discussed how cities and the built environment can counteract this process by supporting more sustainable development. Adaptive reuse is defined as “a process that changes a disused or ineffective item into a new item that can be used for a different purpose”, which strongly triggers the sustainable development of cities. It can be recognized as a promoter of economic growth, social wellbeing, and environmental preservation, given its capability of both preserving past values and creating new ones. The adaptive reuse matches the main points of the circular economy, seen as the sustainable economy, which is aimed at the reduction of natural resource extraction and environmental impact by extending the useful life of materials and promoting recovery, reuse, and regeneration processes. Given these premises, the current contribution aimed to evaluate alternative scenarios for reuse in Castello Visconteo in Cusago, located in the Lombardy region (Italy), and understanding how adaptive reuse could contribute to generating new values within a circular economy perspective. In detail, four alternative scenarios were proposed to face the new needs born during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Since both intangible and tangible values must be considered, a multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been applied by combining economic and qualitative indicators to define the most suitable function for its adaptive reuse. In detail, the Novel Approach to Imprecise Assessment and Decision Environments (NAIADE) was used to identify the best alternative solution based on the opinions of conflicting stakeholders. The innovativeness of the contribution is given by the combination of different methodologies, the preservation of the memory and the generation of new values, and the consideration of adaptive reuse as a strategy for the achievement of sustainable development within a circular economy perspective.

Purpose Several healthcare quality assessment tools measure the processes and outcomes of the care system. The actual physical infrastructure (buildings and organizational) aspects are, however, rarely considered. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of validation and weighting of an evidence-informed framework for the quality assessment of hospital facilities from social, environmental and organizational perspectives to complement other assessments. Design/methodology/approach Sustainable High-quality Healthcare version 2 (SustHealth v2) is the updated version of an existing framework composed of three domains (social, environmental and organizational quality). To validate and establish a relevant weighting, interviews were conducted with 15 professionals within the field of healthcare planning, design, research and management. The study has been conducted through semi-structured interviews and the application of the Simon Roy Figueras (SRF) procedure for the elicitation of weights criteria. The data collected have been processed through the DecSpace web platform. Findings Among the three domains, the organizational qualities appear to be the most important (W = 49%), followed by the environmental (W = 29%) and social aspects (W = 22%). Relevant indicators such as future-proofing, wayfinding and users’ space control emerged as the most important within each macro-area. Those results are confirmed by the outcome of the interviews that highlight user/patient-centeredness, wayfinding strategies and space functionality as the most important concepts to foster in existing healthcare facilities improvement. Practical implications The study highlights important structural and organizational aspects that hospital managers and planners can consider when dealing with healthcare facilities’ quality improvement. Originality/value The use of the SRF multicriteria method is novel in this context when used to weight an assessment tool with a focus on hospital built environment.

This paper proposes an application of the Flexible Interactive Tradeoff (FITradeoff) method for siting healthcare facilities. The selection of the location of complex facilities, as hospitals, can be considered as a multidimensional decision problem for the several issues to be taken into account and, moreover, for the variety of stakeholders that should be involved. The case study under investigation is the location of “La Città della Salute”, a new large healthcare facility in Lombardy Region (Italy). Starting from a cross disciplinary literature review, a multidimensional evaluation framework has been defined and applied to the case study by considering the point of view of one Decision Maker (DM). The application shows that a smaller effort is required from the DM using the FITradeoff method