Values-Based Decision-Making for Conserving Built Heritage

Amidst the urbanization processes and need for contemporary development, preservation, conservation and maintenance of heritage buildings requires rational decisions by the urban local bodies (ULBs). The main challenge lies in the subjectivity in assigning values to heritage buildings because of the diverse stakeholders involved in the process. Value assessment aids to assign Grades (Grade I/II/III) to heritage buildings that ultimately steers the conservation action to be taken. Conflicting opinions on grading heritage buildings and deciding which building is to be preserved and which should be pulled down has resulted in the need for an analytical framework to support the process of grading built heritage. Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is an established method that presents a formal methodology to give solutions to such problems induced due to decision-making taking into account the available information and stakeholders’ opinion. This study accounts for the problems in grade assessment of heritage buildings through the Weighted Sum Method (WSM) for ranking attributes based on multiple criteria, which in the current research are the values assigned to the heritage buildings. The present study thus, aims to grade the built heritage in the colonial hill town (CHT) of Shimla in north India through a values-based priority decision-making method. The research will aid the decision-makers to prioritize the level of conservation these buildings deserve through a transparent analytical framework which otherwise is done subjectively involving conflicting stakeholders, leading to disputes over which heritage resource to be conserved and to what level.