A robust possibilistic programming model for water allocation problem

Abstract

Over the past few years, water allocation problem has increasingly spotlighted by governments, researchers and practitioners. As water plays an important role in people’s life and business environment, the problem of water allocation should be considered carefully to properly satisfy demand of water consumers. In the real world applications, problems like water allocation are uncertain owing to long-term planning horizon of such problems. Therefore, employing efficient methods for tackling uncertainty of parameters should be regarded by field researchers. In this regard, this paper proposes a bi-objective mathematical programming model for water distribution network design. The extended model maximizes total profit of water distribution as well as maximizing priority of water transferring among water customer zones. Then, to cope effectively with uncertainty of parameters, a novel robust possibilistic programming method is applied. Then, fuzzy and robust fuzzy programming models are compared against each other and output results confirm superiority and effective performance of the robust fuzzy model in the water allocation problem. Also, output results of the extended model show its accurate performance that results in applicability of the model as a strong planning tool in real world cases.