A comprehensive literature review of Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods in heritage buildings

The conservation of heritage buildings is a challenging task for conservation architects, urban planners, city managers and stakeholders as it involves complex decision making. Heritage buildings are limited resource with unique values which cannot be replaced, but if they are not conserved with timely interventions, they would be lost permanently. Over the years many researchers have attempted to test the application of Multi-criteria Decision Making methods for aiding the decision-makers in deciding adaptive-reuse strategy, prioritising renovation projects, assessing building significance, evaluating alternative solutions for renovations, assessing functional service life, assessing building condition, contractor selection, suitability for tourism, budget allocations, cost estimation, etc. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review of all the relevant articles from Web of Science (WoS) academic database on applications of MCDM methods in Heritage buildings. The review includes a state of the art bibliometric analysis to understand the research publication trend and trajectory, followed by a comprehensive review classifying the articles as per the application categories, identification of MCDM methods used for criteria weight determination, MCDM methods employed for ranking and methods used for validation. The review also presents the summary of common criteria applied under each application category. The opportunities available for further research in the domain are also discussed. The 42 relevant articles reviewed and summarised in this paper would provide an important reference for future decision-makers and researchers involved in developing MCDM methods based models for heritage buildings.