Harrington Desirability Function for Multi-Attribute Outdoor Space Quality Assessment

Abstract

The current economy of public utilities makes it imperative for property management companies and apartment owners (landlords) to assess the quality of outdoor space near the house. This is a multidimensional phenomenon, which means it requires a special mathematical toolkit based on the Harrington desirability function. The goal hereof is to devise inputs to use the Harrington desirability function for multi-attribute outdoor space quality assessment. The research identifies the acceptable limits of outdoor space quality metrics and defines the effective range of all particular assessment parameters. One finding is that in most cases, it is appropriate to use a four-grade parametric assessment, i.e. to render each particular assessment as normative, unacceptable, acceptable, or best. The paper summarizes the inputs for multi-attribute outdoor space quality assessment by encoding the values of particular parameters into five cumulative metrics in a tabular format. Testing the proposed method shows it offers a rather easy-to-use toolkit suitable for professional and domestic use.