A Comparative Decision Support Systems for Water Resources Management

Abstract

Due to their grave importance, management of water resources has been the focus of attention for many researchers and practitioners from different disciplines across the globe. Trying to capture the different factors going into the decisions related to such a complex task with all of their nuances and intricacies, many researchers have proposed and implemented water resource management systems. Building a Decision Support System (DSS) for this task with a holistic view and practical usage has eluded many researchers. In this work, a comparative study of the DSS proposed for Water Resources Management (WRM) is presented. Specifically, the focus is on the modeling and optimization efforts discussed in the literature for such systems and it is argued about their merits and how they can be combined. A specific region (that is arid and poor in terms of the available water resources) is taken as a case study and the discussion is tailored to this region. Authors’ aim is to help decision makers in this region as well regions of similar circumstances to address the WRM problem in a more effective and sustainable way.