Both the U.S. and German environmental protection agencies (EPAs) agreed on the need to solve five key problems:

1. valuation procedures for formerly used sites

2. market analysis for the reuse

3. cost-benefit analysis

4. cost-financing calculation

5. financial risk management report

The rationale for this website is Problem a). Those most experienced with brownfields have no confidence in existing valuation procedures. Research question 1 is to find out why. It is answered by following advice of Kinnard and Worzala (1999) and Kinnard et al. (2002).  This advice is to test the reliability of brownfield appraisals via empirical data.  it was done as part of the doctoral thesis of Weber (2005).