Multi Criteria Decision Making in Water Management : An Indicator-Based Approach with Application

Although two thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water, the exploitable fresh water is considered to be scarce in most parts of the world. On the other hand, the rapid increases in population growth and economic development greatly exacerbate the water demand as well as pollution, and it is expected that coping with water problems will be harder in the future. Therefore, Integrated Water Resources Management is the way forward, however, this is a quite difficult decision making process due to multiple stakeholders with multiple priorities/preferences and uncertainty in hydrology. This book provides an approach to develop and illustrate a water resources management model that will facilitate indicator-based decisions with respect to environmental, social and economic dimensions in a multi criteria perspective. It also describes a methodology for analyzing supply and demand scenarios jointly and to evaluate the impact of management alternatives for making robust decisions under uncertainty. This book is beneficial to engineers operational in the field of water planning and management or research.