Urban regeneration economics: The case of Lisbon's old downtown

Buildings are one of the biggest assets of Lisbon's central downtown accumulated over a period of several centuries. The efficient use and optimization of the value of these assets are a challenge for both the owners of individual buildings and for society as a whole. Recently, a new regeneration initiative was announced for old urban Lisbon's downtown, covering three fields of intervention: the economic, social and physical fields. This paper presents a case study of the regeneration program for the Lisbon's old downtown including an analysis of the framework used to assess the costs and benefits. Santrauka Pastatai – tai vienas pagrindinių Lisabonos centrinio komercinio rajono turtų, sukauptų per keletą amžių. Efektyvus šio turto naudojimas ir vertės optimizavimas – tai iššūkis ir atskirų pastatų savininkams, ir visai visuomenei. Neseniai paskelbta nauja senojo Lisabonos komercinio rajono atgaivinimo iniciatyva, apimanti tris intervencijos sritis: ekonominę, socialinę ir fi zinę. Šiame darbe pristatomas senojo Lisabonos komercinio rajono atgaivinimo programos atvejo tyrimas, pateikiama sąnaudų bei naudingumo įvertinimo sistemos analizė. First published online: 18 Oct 201

A knowledge-based system for assessing applications for house renovation grants

This research is concerned with the development of a knowledge-based expert system for supporting human experts in assessing applications for the house renovation grant system. The development of the system followed the task structure analysis and the client-centred approach. The task structure analysis describes the system at knowledge level in terms of tasks, problem-solving methods and knowledge types. The implementation of the system followed the client-centred approach. The resulting system implements a framework that integrates case-based reasoning, abductive assembly, decomposition and associative methods. In addition, this framework combines different types of knowledge, which are required by the problem-solving methods. The implementation was carried out together with verification and validation, making it possible to have the system more valid after each stage of the client-centred approach. The system has demonstrated that various problem-solving methods are required for performing the different tasks of the assessment of application for the house renovation grant system. Therefore the system has proved to perform as accurately as human experts do for all of the tasks.Case-based Reasoning, Housing, Knowledge-based Expert Systems,