RANKING GROUNDWATER-MANAGEMENT ALTERNATIVES BY MULTICRITERION ANALYSIS

An application of four multicriterion decision making (MCDM) techniques to a typical ground-water management problem is presented. Criteria representing pumping yield, total costs, and water-shortage risk are considered. The management model expressed in such a multicriterion form is based on the finite-element method and a combined embedding/response matrix method. This model is used to generate a discrete representation of a nondominated solution set. Four MCDM techniques: compromise programming, ELECTRE III, multiattribute utility function, and UTA method representing, respectively, distance-based, outranking, and utility (multiplicative and additive forms) approaches are examined as potential decision-aid tools to select the appropriate management scheme. Comparison of the results shows that these quite different MCDM techniques lead to a similar subset of recommended solutions. Adequacy of these techniques for ground-water management is discussed from the points of view of technique characteristics, decision maker's expectations, analyst's knowledge required, and method output, that is, ranking of alternatives