Evaluation decision support models: Highest and Best Use choice

All decisions relating to the development, transformation, upgrading and enhancement of historical heritage are, by their very nature, characterised by a multi-dimensional profile of the objectives, often conflicting and influenced by each other, thus constituting a complex decision problem. This increasingly requires the use of tools to support in the decision making to improve the rationality of the procedure, ensuring rationality the whole evaluation process is an integrated, multidisciplinary and transparent approach. It emerged that these tools are extremely strategic, especially if they are adopted during the planning stage or pre-feasibility study. They play a role in control and management to support the public body in the choice among different policy options and through negotiation among the various stakeholders for a more transparent and efficient identification of shared choices. Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) as techniques which consider the views of the various parties involved in the development processes, play a role of paramount importance towards sustainability in multiple dimensions. The paper, through case study, among the different analysis techniques multi-criteria, illustrates the application of a model Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) together with Delphi Method, which support the public decision to locate, among all stakeholders, the best appropriate use (Highest and Best Use) relating to the conservation and reuse of the historic building, Palazzo Zani (Reggio Calabria, Italy), through a variety of independent but often conflicting criteria.