Abstract
The aim of this study was to model water reservoir site selection for a real world application in the administrative district of Debub, Eritrea. This is a region were scarcity of water is a fundamental problem. Erratic rainfall, drought and unfavourable hydro-geological characteristics exacerbates the region’s water supply. Consequently, the population of Debub is facing severe water shortages and building reservoirs has been promoted as a possible solution to meet the future demand of water supply. This was the most powerful motivation to identify candidate sites for locating water reservoirs. A number of conflicting qualitative and quantitative criteria exist for evaluating alternative sites. Decisions regarding criteria are often accompanied by ambiguities and vagueness. This makes fuzzy logic a more natural approach to this kind of Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) problems. This paper proposes a combined two-stage MCDA methodology. The first stage involved utilizing the most simplistic type of data aggregation techniques known as Boolean Intersection or logical AND to identify areas restricted by environmental and hydrological constraints and therefore excluded from further study. The second stage involved integrating fuzzy logic with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to identify optimum and back-up candidate water reservoir sites in the area designated for further study.
Highlights
The scarcity of water is a fundamental problem for Eritrea
The first stage involved utilizing the most simplistic type of data aggregation techniques known as Boolean Intersection or logical AND to identify areas restricted by environmental and hydrological constraints and excluded from further study
Pairwise comparison allows one to consider two factors at a time, which reduces the complexity of the decision making process
Summary
The scarcity of water is a fundamental problem for Eritrea. Erratic rainfall exacerbates the country‘s unfavorable hydro-geological characteristics. Eritrea‘s geology, combined with the climatic conditions affects the quality of the water—making it rich in salts and other natural pollutants [1]. The country has only two perennial river systems, the Setit River, which forms the country‘s border with. Ethiopia and drains into the Nile basin, and the Gash Barka system, which collects the run-off water from the highlands. All the other rivers in the country are seasonal and carry water only after rainfall, which means that they are dry most of the year. The country has limited sources of fresh surface water, and groundwater can be tapped, quantity and quality is usually poor [2]
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