Addressing Decisions About Courthouse’s Siting: A Multidimensional Approach

The study aims to support the location and redevelopment of the system of court buildings. An economic, environmental, and social assessment of the alternatives is developed using Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) combined with onsite analysis to provide a comprehensive decision-making framework. Given the multidimensional nature of the decision problem, fundamental objectives (thematic areas) were identified as a first step, which were subsequently divided into means objectives (criteria) that allow the problem to be analyzed by considering both aspects of an extrinsic nature, related to the context in which the area under evaluation is located, and aspects of an intrinsic nature, related to the state of buildings, plant characteristics, and functional layout. Considering the coexistence of different objectives, which express the needs and expectations of the stakeholders involved, the decision problem was broken down into the following five thematic areas: 1. Economic criteria; 2. Locational criteria; 3. Socio-environmental criteria; 4. Typological-functional-organizational criteria; 5. Morphological-structural and energy criteria. The proposed analysis provides the visualization of both partial and overall results; the standardized performances are first aggregated considering the subject area they belong to, and then the final ranking can be obtained. In addition, sensitivity analysis is a valuable tool for developing robust conclusions and operational recommendations; it validates the results obtained. The proposed analysis allows to explore strengths and weak- nesses of the alternatives under evaluation, supporting the decision maker (DM) in making a conscious decision consistent with the explicit overall objective.