Decision support systems in Lithuania

Abstract

Quite a number of people when purchasing a house pay attention to its price. Others concentrate on operating and maintenance costs comprising of the house’s heating and maintenance costs, the repair work, insurance, taxes and other related expenses. A third group of customers are concerned with the development rates of the surrounding area’s infrastructure (i.e. schools, hospitals, theatres, concert halls, stores and communication lines, etc.), the environment’s level of contamination and neighbours, etc. A fourth group of purchasers’ puts emphasis on the issues of comfort and convenience. Most customers identify comfort and convenience with the number of rooms, their size and height, layout and planning, functional efficiency, proportional distribution of rooms, size of the kitchen, total area of the apartment, absence of hazardous substances, thermal and acoustic insulation of walls and level of the engineering equipment, etc. However, most often purchasers try to carry out a complex evaluation of both positive and negative characteristics of the house. It should be also noted that different people when choosing between alternatives and depending on their needs and possibilities, usually use different systems of criteria and attach different values and weights to the similar criteria.