GIS BASED INFORMATION AND DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR URBAN REGENERATION PROJECTS

Urban Regeneration is an actual and important problem, of fundamental importance for the management of cities, environmental protection, and general improvement of life conditions. It is no longer only an area of study and research; it became part of the new urban and housing politics. It addresses not only the renovation of large numbers of buildings but also the redesign of the urban infrastructures and services. Such efforts involve complex decisions as a consequence of the multiple dimensions of the problem that include special technical engineering requirements, safety concerns, financial costs and socio-economic, environmental, aesthetic, political impacts, among others. This multidimensional nature of urban regeneration projects and their large capital investments justify the development and use of state-of-the-art decision support methodologies to assist Decision Makers (DM). This research introduces a web Spatial Decision Support System (web-SDSS), developed for aiding the DM in the analysis of the problem and in the definition of strategies and priorities of intervention. It integrates a data base management module, a Geographic Information System (GIS), a Multicriteria analysis methods base, and an adequate Human-computer interface - aimed at minimizing the cognitive effort required from users. An example of the application of the web-SDSS to a real-world context (the Renovation Project of Coimbra Downtown) is presented.