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Abstract:Brownfield land is one of the least exploited resources for urban development in a number of Eastern European countries. Establishing a rational strategy for redeveloping brownfields is an unambiguously complex task that requires considering a number of different economic, social, physical and environmental factors. The strategic decision-making has a long term impact on the quality of life, ecological balance and urban structure. Therefore, the paper is aimed at developing a comprehensive set of criteria that contribute to the redevelopment of brownfield land in urban areas. It focuses on six main development strategies that embrace creating residential, green, commercial, recreational activity and industrial areas or leaving land as a reserve. Geographic information system (GIS) tools are employed to collect the spatial information, obtain the initial set of criteria and derive the statistical data. Expert's evaluations along with a statistical method of gauging the level of concordance of their opinion combined with Delphi method are used for determining significance of criteria within economic, social, physical (urbanistic) and environmental criteria groups. This study establishes the most significant criteria for implementing different scenarios of the brownfield land redevelopment in Vilnius, Lithuania. Developed framework will support the decision-making process in the brownfield land redevelopment aiding a sustainable urban planning.

The multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methodology implies relative quantitative evaluation of several compared alternatives relative to the chosen objective of evaluation. There is a compulsory requirement for making an evaluation applying such methods: availability of other alternatives for making a comparison. Nevertheless, frequently other alternatives are not available when the evaluated object is unique, and no analogous objects are present. In such cases the use of MCDM methods is not possible. The new proposed in this paper methodology of the absolute evaluation allows evaluating unique objects and processes, thus providing new possibilities for application known MCDA methods. For example, the evaluation of the dynamics of attractiveness based on the absolute evaluation can be more useful than the relative one as the comparison is being made with invariable objects rather than with the ones which can substantially change over time. In addition, the absolute evaluation is the only possible solution in such cases, when other objects for comparison are not available. The presented in the paper approach therefore provides a wider range of possible solutions for a decision-maker. In the proposed methodology the method TOPSIS was used as the most appropriate MCDM method for such evaluations. Proves of distinct features of the method are provided. The results of the absolute MCDM evaluation are compared with the results of the relative MCDM evaluation.

The successful development of economy is based on effective and stable performance of commercial banks. The evaluation of stability and soundness of banks is a complex task, involving a considerable number of multidimensional criteria. It is an idiosyncratic task because of a complicated internal business structure of banks, intertwined cash flows and strong influence of market conditions on soundness levels. In this paper, soundness and stability dynamics of commercial banks registered in Lithuania was evaluated by using several multiple criteria methods from simpler ones to the more sophisticated PROMETHEE method. The results obtained indicate that the levels of soundness and stability of banks operating in the developing Lithuanian market of commercial banks noticeably fluctuate. A comparison of the obtained results reveals the causes of the fluctuations. A simultaneous use of different multiple criteria methods for evaluating the soundness and stability of commercial banks increases the robustness of the evaluation. ARTICLE INFO

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