Abstract
The safety of drinking water from source areas is an important issue, and the fuzzy comprehensive assessment method is a useful evaluation approach. However, it has limitations due to its complicated calculation, as well as the effects of subjective factors on the results. The objective of the research is to develop an effective method with more objective results for tackling water environmental evaluation problems in drinking water source areas. In this study, a new method— i.e., the fuzzy comprehensive assessment method based on the entropy weight method—was proposed; a water environmental safety evaluation index system was built, and then the water environmental safety of the Heshangshan drinking water source area was evaluated. The results indicated that the water environment of the study area was substantially safe. Furthermore, water-saving measurements should be taken, the industrial structure should be optimized, investment in environmental protection should be increased, and the utilization ratio of water resources should be improved. It can be concluded that the proposed approaches were feasible and reasonable. It is the first attempt to develop such an evaluation method and index system for water environmental safety evaluation, which can provide references and decision support for the related researchers and managers.
Highlights
Drinking water is the most important natural resource necessary for human life and economic prosperity [1,2]
This study developed a new model—i.e., the fuzzy comprehensive assessment method based on the entropy weight method—and built a water environmental safety evaluation index system for drinking water source areas based on the PSR model
Taking the Heshangshan drinking water source area in the Three Gorges Reservoir area as the study area, the water environmental safety evaluation was advanced on the basis of the proposed model and the evaluation index system
Summary
Drinking water is the most important natural resource necessary for human life and economic prosperity [1,2]. Ensuring that drinking water areas remain clean is an important issue in the field of water environmental management, ecological protection, and economic and social growth [3,4,5]. Water environmental safety evaluation is a scientific and effective approach to identifying potential risks, assessing the safety level, and determining the water supply capacity of drinking water source areas [6,7]. FCA is one of the feasible approaches for tackling water environmental safety evaluation, and has been widely used in many fields, such as water resource management, water environmental protection, the safety evaluation of drinking water sources, etc. Li et al [18] used FCA on the basis of fuzzy mathematics and MATLAB to evaluate the
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