Development of a Multi Criteria Decision Making Tool for a Water Resources Decision Support System

Abstract

A new tool, Spatial Multi Criteria Decision Making model (SMCDM), is developed for the well-known Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP) allocation model facilitating Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) process. Being able to tightly link with WEAP, this tool functions as extension software. The framework of the MCDM procedure in this extension software has a hierarchical structure in which two levels of decision making are taken into consideration. The first level is a Multi Objective Decision Making (MODM) and the second is a Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM). Three different objectives namely Supply-demand Equilibrium, Drought Mitigation and Economic Efficiency are considered for the analysis and prioritization of river basin management strategies in the MODM whereas for each objective, several attributes are taken into account through different MADMs at the second level. The developed tool benefits from the ability of spatial weighting through which physical, economic and socio-environmental aspects are considered in a weighting process. The combination of WEAP and developed SMCDM is applied to prioritize different management strategies of meeting domestic water demand in Gorganrud river basin in Iran. The results confirmed the applicability of the proposed tool that facilitates impact analyses of water resources development plans in a river basin.