Evaluation of the Three Gorges Dam project using multi-criteria analysis (MCA) based on a sustainable perspective

Abstract

The Three Gorges dam of China is one of the largest and expensive hydropower projects of the world. The four main purposes of the project are flood control,energy production, improved navigation and fresh water supply. The dam project has been completed and running successfully with the potential benefits. However, this project is still a controversial issue among many environmentalists and socialists due to various impacts. This study focuses on the benefit and the impacts of the project, and also evaluates the performance of the project using multi-criteria analysis (MCA) approach from a sustainable perspective. Different sustainability criteria related with the dam project have been identified and used for the ranking and rating process. The final result of MCA comes with this scoring process and pairwise comparison, which evaluates the performance of the project considering different positive and negative aspects.