Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Framework for Evaluating Historic Sites in Huai’an Ancient Cities

Abstract

The preservation and restoration of historic sites is of great significance to the continuation of a city’s historical heritage and high-quality development. However, the conservation management of historic sites is still in the stage of exploration and improvement. The current states of development and preservation have been facing many problems, such as fragmented and poor states of preservation. It is crucial to retain and revitalize the authenticity of historic sites. A multi-criteria decision-making approach to an innovative evaluation model is proposed. Based on the cultural, social, and economic characteristics of the historical sites, an evaluation index system is constructed and weighted to judge its importance. The results suggest that the statuses of the historic relics at the facet layer have the most significant effect on the preservation of the authenticity of historic sites. The completeness of historic relics ranks first in weight among the evaluation indexes, which suggests that emphasis should be not only on their protection, but also on the preservation of their overall styles. The results will enable urban decision makers to effectively set the priorities of preservation and restoration by regions and stages. Huai’an, a major ancient city along the Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal in China, was taken as an empirical case study to validate the feasibility of the evaluation index system and its ability to provide references for the preservation and restoration of historic sites.

A Collaborative Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Framework for the Adaptive Reuse Design of Disused Railways

“…Although the potential of this railway heritage as a tool for widespread landscape enhancement is acknowledged, and numerous projects for the enhancement and conversion of disused railway tracks have been implemented, particularly in the American and European contexts [1][2][3][4]6,8,20,28,29], there is still a clear lack of decision-making frameworks to aid effective decision making and participatory approaches to ensure the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of such projects. This study aimed to address this gap by proposing an innovative and collaborative multi-criteria decision-making framework [15,[30][31][32].…”

“…In meeting these requirements, decision-making processes [15,32] concerning CH valorization can leverage multi-criteria methods to comprehensively consider diverse heritage aspects. Additionally, employing multi-actor methods becomes imperative as they allow for the incorporation of the varied interests and perspectives of public, private, and social actors [35][36][37].…”