Selection of the Best Water Supply Scenario for Urban Demand Based on the Risk Analysis in Decision-Making Model

Abstract

In recent years, inefficient water resources management has caused to serious crisis in supplying water for urban demand within the watersheds. Therefore, one of the most important challenges for urban decision-makers (DMs) is selecting the most desirable water supply scenario, satisfying the several sustainable development criteria. Accordingly, this paper has developed a risk-based multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model for selecting the best scenario based on the modified ordered weighted averaging (MOWA) operator. This operator considers the risk-taking degree of DMs, the criteria importance degree and the DMs’ power weight, simultaneously. By use of this operator, the scenario scores have been calculated in several risk cases of decision-making, depending on the satisfaction of the number of criteria. This approach has been developed for Mashhad watershed in north-eastern Iran, to select the best water supply scenario for urban demand in 2040. The evaluation of scenarios has been performed with respect to the sustainable development criteria based on the urban watershed modelling. Finally, depending on each case of risk-taking degree, the most preferable scenario has been determined for satisfying the important criteria within the watershed. Development of this model is recommended for any watershed management modelling to supply urban demand.