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Within the next 20–30 years, adaptive reuse will have the greatest potential to reduce the built environment's environmental impact. Despite this, stakeholders still do not have sufficient points of reference in justifying and evaluating their adaptation practice decisions. The decision to reuse a building involves a complex set of considerations, including economic, social, environmental, legislative and architectural issues. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the unique decision-making criteria among stakeholders when considering adaptive reuse of an existing building asset in Malaysian heritage cities.

Thirty (30) unique criteria of decision-making were identified through a detailed literature review. The quantitative method of a self-completion questionnaire survey was conducted among stakeholders, including architects, valuers, planners, government department, developers and building owners. There were asked about their opinion and view on the criteria that could have influenced the decision-making in considering the adaptive reuse of the existing buildings in two heritage cities in the states of Penang and Malacca, Malaysia. Thus, it is the aim of this paper to evaluate and reveal the key criteria pertaining to this.

The analysis shows that there are seven key criteria that influence the decision-making of adaptive reuse of existing building: building value; building suitability; structural condition; official plan and zoning; building code; client requirement and heritage designated. In this regard, while “building value” factors were the key determinants in deciding whether to reuse or demolish, the asset’s suitability and structural condition, as well as rules, were also taken into account. Additionally, the environmental, economic and social tenets of sustainability were also identified as important, but were given less weight in matters concerning reuse. And due to the fact that many of the existing buildings are rapidly becoming obsolete, they are now increasingly being prioritized during the adaptive reuse decision-making process to ensure long-term outcomes.

The research is limited owing to the difficulty in obtaining accurate information concerning the number of decision agents who have been involved in the adaptive reuse of existing buildings. Thus, the respondents in this research were randomly selected. Due to this limitation, the result does not encompass the whole Malaysia, only the stakeholders in Penang and Malacca have been selected the respondents in this study as these states are listed in the UNESCO World Heritage.

When deciding whether to reuse or demolish an existing building, the proposed criteria will outline the crucial areas that must be examined by owners, developers and key project stakeholders. It can also be used to assess the financial, physical and social aspects of a cultural project.

This paper adds to the body of knowledge concerning decision-making criteria for adaptive reuse strategies in achieving heritage city sustainability.

Adaptive reuse is an effective strategy for optimizing the operational and commercial performance of built assets. While the benefits of adaptive re‐use have been widely espoused, it would appear that owners and practitioners lack a point of reference to justify and evaluate their decision‐making with regard to reusing existing assets. This paper therefore aims to develop a model to assist practitioners with their decision‐making when considering to re‐use or demolish an existing built asset.

To gain an understanding of the issues that owners and practitioners are confronted with when considering adaptive re‐use, demolition and issues pertaining to sustainability, an interpretative research approach was adopted. A total of 81 in‐depth interviews were conducted over a six‐month period with a variety of stakeholders such as architects, developers, planners, building managers/owners and property consultants. Content analysis was used as the primary analysis technique on the collected data.

The analysis of the interviews revealed three key criteria are used to examine adaptive reuse decision making: capital investment; asset condition; and regulation. While financial criteria such as development and construction costs were the primary determinants influencing the decision reuse or demolish, the physical condition of the asset juxtaposed with regulations were also considered. Additionally, issues associated with the environmental, economic and social tenets of sustainability were identified as being important but had been given less priority when considering reuse. As current building stock is rapidly becoming obsolete, increasing emphasis is beginning to be placed on them during the adaptive reuse decision‐making process to ensure sustainable outcomes.

The developed model identifies the critical areas that owners, developers and key project stakeholders need to consider when deciding to either reuse or demolish an existing building. It also can be used to evaluate the economic, physical and social implications of undertaking a heritage project. Project and asset managers need to be aware of the impact that different variables have on a reuse project's construction and operational performance as well as long term commercial performance.

The proposed adaptive reuse decision‐making model is grounded in practice and therefore encompasses the real‐life dilemmas and issues facing practitioners. The model captures the complexity associated with the adaptive reuse process and provides an important reference point for developing future ex‐ante evaluation models for its investment justification.

Adaptive reuse of building assets is an important approach to sustainability. Adapting a building for new uses often involves complex factors in the decision-making process, particularly in conservation areas. The paper aims to show an evaluation process of the adaptive reuse potential of historic buildings that are subject to change in the Grand Canal area, a world heritage site in Hangzhou, China.

For this purpose, a model has been established with aggregated views of professionals on the degree to which a variety of factors affect the buildings’ potential for adaptive reuse. The model intends to help prioritise some of the buildings in the area for adaptive reuse, which is important for effective allocation of public resources. Interviews with professionals, analytic hierarchy process and the Delphi method have been used to establish the evaluation model. It is then applied to the Grand Canal area to generate indices for buildings’ adaptive reuse potential and the ranking of priority. The indices are generated through public scoring of historic buildings against the variables and calculated through the model.

The paper concludes that the evaluation process is an effective way to engage the public in the decision-making process and to balance conflict interests of various stakeholders in the management of historic building assets in conservation areas.

The research has proposed an evaluation model to help set priority of buildings subject to adaptive reuse and to help distribute public fund effectively. It facilitates wide public engagement in the decision-making progress of adaptive reuse of historic buildings.

The current study evaluates the success of this project at the local scale by examining the degree of compliance with local sustainability indicators after the revival of the Zanjan Match Factory. Hence, the purpose of this article is to evaluate the prosperity of the Zanjan match factory monument restoration project in achieving local sustainability. The study intention of prosperity implies any action, achievement or positive outcome that contributes to informed decision-making and leads to sustainable neighborhood development.

The current research is applied research in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical, and survey-field in terms of method. The criteria evaluated in this research include criteria as follows: (1) evaluation of protection and preservation of the building, (2) success of the new function and (3) sustainable local development, which are defined items for each criterion. The questions of the questionnaire are prepared according to the Likert 5 points spectrum, the value of which is answered between 1 and 5 and the hierarchy goes from “very good” to “very poor”. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient obtained for the validity of the questionnaire questions is 0.85, which indicates the appropriate validity of the questionnaire questions.

The study findings indicate that the applied criteria are at an acceptable level since the criterion of sustainable local development and architecture have obtained the scores of 4 and the new function criterion scores of 3. Field surveys and observations of changes made in the neighborhood including the construction of a thoroughfare, commercial complex, service complex and local parks verify the validity of the findings. The results of the proposed study indicate that adaptive reuse projects should not be taken into account as individual projects since an individual building can be a catalyst for the restoration of other buildings and contribute to the transformation of the whole area by affecting the surrounding environment.

Adaptive reuse of building assets is an important approach to sustainability that can be utilized in conserving and preserving industrial heritage buildings was described in this paper. An adaptive reuse project follows three aims of cultural and historical heritage conservation, the success of the new performance and the development of local communities and a successful project appropriately balances these three goals.

This paper aims to link findings from laboratory-based decision-making research and decision-making competence (DMC) aspects that may be central for career-related decision-making processes. Past research has identified individual differences in rational responses in decision situations, which the authors refer to as DMC. Although there is a robust literature on departures from rational responses focused on heuristics and biases (H&B) in decision-making, such evidence is largely confined to group-level differences observed in psychology laboratories and has not been extended to the realm of career development and workforce behavior.

By first introducing the concept of DMC and contextualizing it within organizations and the work environment, the paper outlines a review on recent development concerning debiasing interventions in organizations and provides insights on how these may be effective with regard to organizational performance and individual career development.

The contribution presents a perspective to improve knowledge about career decision-making competence (C-DMC) by presenting an approach linking decision-making research to interventions aiming at managing H&B and systematic misperceptions in career processes.

This contribution is one of the few linking decision-making research to the applied context of organizations and of career competences. Moreover, while some research has treated decision-making skills as traits, this contribution provides support to consider them developable as competencies.

This paper aims to present a generic lifecycle framework model for guiding architects, engineers, contractors and facilities managers (AEC/FM) practitioners on the effective implementation of adaptive reuse projects.

A mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative techniques was followed in the development of the framework model. A literature review was conducted to comprehend the processes involved in adaptive reuse projects. In total, 90 AEC/FM practitioners were surveyed to identify the current practices in these projects. A generic framework model was then developed to standardize the processes involved, using integration definition for function modeling process modeling methodology. Face-to-face interviews with a targeted group of 30 AEC/FM practitioners were conducted, to validate the developed framework model, by assessing the importance and the frequency of implementing each function in the developed framework model.

The framework model consisted of four sequential processes, namely, assess the feasibility of the adaptive reuse project, design the adaptive reuse project, construct the adaptive reuse project and operate and maintain the adaptive reuse project. The validation confirmed the importance of all the framework functions and the frequency of their implementation.

This research contributes to the literature and the AEC/FM professions, through developing a lifecycle and knowledge-oriented framework model for building adaptive reuse. The framework presents clear documentation of adaptive reuse processes. Thus, it holds the potential of endeavoring on adaptive reuse projects to be more efficient.

There is growing acceptance that heritage buildings are an important element of Australia's social capital and that heritage conservation provides economic, cultural and social benefits to urban communities. The decision whether to reuse a building entails a complex set of considerations including location, heritage, architectural assets, and market trends. The role of building conservation has changed from preservation to being part of a broader strategy for urban regeneration and sustainability. A growing body of opinion supports the view that adaptive reuse is a powerful strategy for handling this change. Urban development and subsequent redevelopment has a significant impact on the environment and the purpose of this paper is to investigate how the conservation of heritage buildings may contribute to a more sustainable urban environment.

This paper examines the views and experiences of architects, developers and building managers who have been involved with the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings. In total, 60 semi‐structured interviews were drawn from this stakeholder group to investigate their current understanding of the sustainability issues associated with the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings.

The subsequent data show that despite many positive outcomes in terms of sustainability, the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings is considered to create many problems; not the least of which is whether heritage buildings are icons that should be conserved or whether they are in fact eyesores and unviable for adaptive reuse.

The contribution of heritage buildings to the three tenets of sustainability has not previously been explored comprehensively and as a result there is a conflict of interest between the preservation of heritage values and progression of the sustainable urban design agenda.

Customization by segmenting within human–computer interaction is an emerging phenomenon. Appealing graphical elements that cater to user needs are considered progressively important, as the way a graphic is visually represented can greatly contribute to the interaction. However, aesthetic perceptions are subjective and may differ by target group. Understanding variations in user perceptions may aid in design processes; therefore, we set out to investigate the effects of demographic differences relating to perceptions of graphical user interface (GUI) element (i.e. game app icon) aesthetics.

The authors employed a vignette experiment with random participant (n = 513) assignment to evaluate 4 icons from a total of 68 pre-selected mobile game icons using semantic differential scales. This resulted in a total of 2052 individual icon evaluations. Regression analyses were performed with the effects of age, gender and time using graphical user interfaces (i.e. app stores) and the interactions of these variables relating to perceptions of GUI element aesthetics.

The results indicate that, overall, demographic factors have relatively little effect on how icons are perceived. Significant relations suggest that experienced users, younger audiences and women are more critical in their perception of aesthetic excellence, and that perceptions change for younger women. The implications of the findings are discussed via adaptive decision-making theory.

In the context of graphical user interface element aesthetics, demographic differences have received minimal attention as moderating variables regardless of their relevance in design and development. Hence, it merits further research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of organizational factors on individual decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and time pressure. A method to assess the impact of individual and organizational factors on individual decisions is proposed and experimented in the context of triage decision-making process.

The adopted methodology is based on the bias-variance decomposition formula. The method, usually applied to assess the predictive accuracy of heuristics, has been adjusted to discriminate between the impact of organizational and individual factors affecting heuristic processes. To test the methodology, 25 clinical scenarios have been designed and submitted, through simulations, to the triage nurses of two Spanish hospitals.

Nurses’ decisions are affected by organizational factors in certain task conditions, such as situations characterized by complete and coherent information. When relevant information is lacking and available information is not coherent, decision-makers base their assessments on their personal experience and gut feeling.

Discriminating between the influence of organizational factors and individual ones is the starting point for a more in-depth understanding of how organization can guide the decision process. Using simulations of clinical scenarios in field research does not allow for capturing the influence of some contextual factors, such as the nurses’ stress levels, on individual decisions. This issue will be addressed in further research.

Bias and variance are useful measurements for detecting process improvement actions. A bias prevalence requires a re-design of organizational settings, whereas training would be preferred when variance prevails.

The main contribution of this work concerns the novel interpretation of bias and variance concepts to assess organizational factors’ influence on heuristic decision-making processes, taking into account the level of complexity of decision-related tasks.

This study is to develop an accurate assessment tool to identify the factors that may influence determining the appropriate use for historic buildings.

The research method in this study is qualitative. The integrated MCDM (multi-criteria decision-making) method is used to determine the most appropriate use for historic buildings, which ultimately led to the development of the MAU (most appropriate use) model.

The results of this study show that, in terms of preserving identity and cultural heritage, the role intangible criteria have to play is seemingly more important than that of tangible criteria. Also, weighted criteria in the matrix relating the “use” options demonstrate cultural-social, commercial and educational uses being apparently more important than other uses.

The novelty of this research is in providing a framework to facilitate contribution to determine the most suitable use for historic buildings with the ability to set criteria and separate weights for each building aiming to increase the useful life to the maximum extent and delaying the need for a subsequent major overhaul.