A multicriteria decision support system for housing evaluation

Economic and population growth, higher life quality standards, and lower interest rates have led to an increase in the demand for housing. However, in many urban areas, land for housing is becoming scarce, and environmental and construction requirements more stringent. Therefore, the need arises for an adequate methodology to evaluate the urban built space under different perspectives (consumers, promoters, municipal authorities, etc.) and multiple evaluation criteria. A decision support system for housing evaluation is presented in this paper. It integrates a problem editor, a data base management module, a set of multiple criteria decision aid methods and an adequate Human–computer interface, which can be integrated with GIS tools. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.