A Review of Multiple Criteria Analysis for Water Resource Planning and Management
TL;DR: It is found that MCA is being heavily used for water policy evaluation, strategic planning and infrastructure selection and a wide range of MCA methods are being used with the fuzzy set analysis, paired comparison and outranking methods being most common.
Abstract: Multiple criteria analysis (MCA) is a framework for ranking or scoring the overall performance of decision options against multiple objectives. The approach has widespread and growing application in the field of water resource management. This paper reviews 113 published water management MCA studies from 34 countries. It finds that MCA is being heavily used for water policy evaluation, strategic planning and infrastructure selection. A wide range of MCA methods are being used with the fuzzy set analysis, paired comparison and outranking methods being most common. The paper also examines the motivations for adopting MCA in water management problems and considers future research directions.
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TL;DR: A classification scheme and a comprehensive literature review are presented in order to uncover, classify, and interpret the current research on PROMETHEE methodologies and applications.
1,325 citations
TL;DR: The aim is to investigate how ELECTRE and ELECTRE-based methods have been considered in various areas, including area of applications, modifications to the methods, comparisons with other methods, and general studies of the ELECTRE methods.
419 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a standard methodology has been applied to delineate groundwater resource potential zonation based on integrated analytical hierarchy process (AHP), geographic information system (GIS), and remote sensing (RS) techniques in Kurdistan plain, Iran.
Abstract: Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) as an advantageous tool has been applied by various researchers to improve their management ability. Management of groundwater resource, especially under data-scarce and arid areas, encountered a lot of problems and issues which drives the planers to use of MCDA. In this research, a standard methodology has been applied to delineate groundwater resource potential zonation based on integrated analytical hierarchy process (AHP), geographic information system (GIS), and remote sensing (RS) techniques in Kurdistan plain, Iran. At first, the effective thematic layers on the groundwater potential such as rainfall, lithology, drainage density, lineament density, and slope percent were derived from the spatial geodatabase. Then, the assigned weights of thematic layers based on expert knowledge were normalized by eigenvector technique of AHP. To prepare the groundwater potential index, the weighted linear combination (WLC) method was applied in GIS. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn for groundwater potential map, and the area under curve (AUC) was computed. Results indicated that the rainfall and slope percent factors have taken the highest and lowest weights, respectively. Validation of results showed that the AHP method (AUC = 73.66 %) performed fairly good predication accuracy. Such findings revealed that in the regions suffering from data scarcity through the MCDM methodology, the planners would be able to having accurate knowledge on groundwater resources based on geospatial data analysis. Therefore, the developing scenario for future planning of groundwater exploration can be achieved in an efficient manner.
389 citations
Cites background from "A Review of Multiple Criteria Analy..."
...Hajkowicz and Collins (2007) reviewed the application of the MCDAmethods in water resource management and indicated that the AHP is widespread and growing....
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TL;DR: A comprehensive review on the application of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) literature in the field of infrastructure management is presented in this paper, which identifies trends and new developments in MCDM methods.
Abstract: In infrastructure management, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) has emerged as a decision support tool to integrate various technical information and stakeholder values. Different MCDM techniques and tools have been developed. This paper presents a comprehensive review on the application of MCDM literature in the field of infrastructure management. Approximately 300 published papers were identified that report MCDM applications in the field of infrastructure management during 1980–2012. The reviewed papers are classified into application to the type of infrastructure (e.g. bridges and pipes), and prevalent decision or intervention (e.g. repair and rehabilitate). In addition, the papers were also classified according to MCDM methods used in the analysis. The paper provides taxonomy of those articles and identifies trends and new developments in MCDM methods. The results suggest that there is a significant growth in MCDM applications in infrastructure management applications of MCDM over the last decade...
309 citations
TL;DR: The study compares the results of two quantitative techniques in defining the extent of land-use zones at a large scale urban planning scenario and demonstrates that in the early stage of the planning process, simplified methods can be sufficient.
271 citations
References
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01 Jan 1976TL;DR: In this article, a confused decision maker, who wishes to make a reasonable and responsible choice among alternatives, can systematically probe his true feelings in order to make those critically important, vexing trade-offs between incommensurable objectives.
Abstract: Many of the complex problems faced by decision makers involve multiple conflicting objectives. This book describes how a confused decision maker, who wishes to make a reasonable and responsible choice among alternatives, can systematically probe his true feelings in order to make those critically important, vexing trade-offs between incommensurable objectives. The theory is illustrated by many real concrete examples taken from a host of disciplinary settings. The standard approach in decision theory or decision analysis specifies a simplified single objective like monetary return to maximise. By generalising from the single objective case to the multiple objective case, this book considerably widens the range of applicability of decision analysis.
8,895 citations
5,312 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a survey of the state of the art in multiple criterion decision analysis (MCDA) with an overview of the early history and current state of MCDA.
Abstract: In two volumes, this new edition presents the state of the art in Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Reflecting the explosive growth in the field seen during the last several years, the editors not only present surveys of the foundations of MCDA, but look as well at many new areas and new applications. Individual chapter authors are among the most prestigious names in MCDA research, and combined their chapters bring the field completely up to date. Part I of the book considers the history and current state of MCDA, with surveys that cover the early history of MCDA and an overview that discusses the “pre-theoretical” assumptions of MCDA. Part II then presents the foundations of MCDA, with individual chapters that provide a very exhaustive review of preference modeling, along with a chapter devoted to the axiomatic basis of the different models that multiple criteria preferences. Part III looks at outranking methods, with three chapters that consider the ELECTRE methods, PROMETHEE methods, and a look at the rich literature of other outranking methods. Part IV, on Multiattribute Utility and Value Theories (MAUT), presents chapters on the fundamentals of this approach, the very well known UTA methods, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and its more recent extension, the Analytic Network Process (ANP), as well as a chapter on MACBETH (Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique). Part V looks at Non-Classical MCDA Approaches, with chapters on risk and uncertainty in MCDA, the decision rule approach to MCDA, the fuzzy integral approach, the verbal decision methods, and a tentative assessment of the role of fuzzy sets in decision analysis. Part VI, on Multiobjective Optimization, contains chapters on recent developments of vector and set optimization, the state of the art in continuous multiobjective programming, multiobjective combinatorial optimization, fuzzy multicriteria optimization, a review of the field of goal programming, interactive methods for solving multiobjective optimization problems, and relationships between MCDA and evolutionary multiobjective optimization (EMO). Part VII, on Applications, selects some of the most significant areas, including contributions of MCDA in finance, energy planning problems, telecommunication network planning and design, sustainable development, and portfolio analysis. Finally, Part VIII, on MCDM software, presents well known MCDA software packages.
4,055 citations