Page 3 - Grazia_Napoli_2014

Spacial Analisys and Knowledge

To assess the renewal of degraded urban areas and the preservation of
architectural units, a decision aid model could be proposed to define intervention
priorities. This model needs an extensive system of spacial knowledge to
understand the ways architecture is designed and relates itself to the site (La
Rocca, Leonardi and Napoli, 1995). Dwelling principles of residential buildings;
construction systems and their rules have to be investigated by using the
following means of investigation:
- A survey of urban and sub-urban building blocks exemplified in a chart
collection of architectural elements, classified by form, material and
production process; relations which occur between the environmental and
architectural elements;
- An especially designed database, where quantity and quality information is
collected and organised according to the specific criteria of the evaluating model.
The structure of the database is divided into three levels: Level 1 -
Environmental Unit (a room); Level 2 - Residential Unit (a house, a flat); Level
3 - Architectural Unit (a building). Three different data sheets are prepared for
each level to collect the data. It is worth specifying that the pieces of

information contained in level n forms (e.g. residential unit) are obtained by
combining a survey with the specific data for that level and the data pertaining
to the lower level (n-1) (e.g. environmental unit). The above three levels are
interrelated to create a database that can be easily stored, updated and consulted.

The Analytic Network Process and the Case Study

The Analytic Network Process (ANP) (Saaty, 2005, 2006) has been selected
among many multicriteria models (Bouyssou, Marchant, Pirlot, Tsoukiàs and
Vincke, 2006; Figueira, Greco and Ehrgott, 2005) because its holistic approach
allows to explicit the relations among all the elements of a system and to solve
several decision problems in the urban and land transformations (Bottero and
Ferretti, 2011). The ANP methodology requires the development of a network
that better delineates the decision problem, establishing the following: the
Decision Maker’s (DM) objective, the clusters (groups) of the nodes (elements)
that define the aspects of the decision problem, and the alternatives.
Furthermore, the relationships (feedback and dependences) within and between
the clusters of the network elements are incorporated. Moreover, the ANP
network is founded on pairwise comparison measurements according to a ratio
scale expressed by the DM. In this case study, the decision problem concerns the
definition of a ranking among alternative restoration projects for five
“Architectural Unit” in a block of buildings (A.U.2, A.U.11, A.U.22, A.U.23,
A.U.26), to reach the goal of maximizing the preservation of the Favignana’s
traditional architecture (Fig. 1). Ranking will be used to establish the financing

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