دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی مقایسه مدل های تصمیم گیری چند معیاره جبران ناپذیر و غیرمتعارف در مدیریت استراتژیک منابع آب - اشپرینگر 2017

Abstract

Growing water demands as well as inconsistency between water demand and water supply pose new challenges for water resources managers in arid regions. This study examines the strategies to tackle water shortage for a sustainable development in Shahrood, Iran. A contentious plan has been proposed to transfer water from the Caspian Sea in north of Iran to this region. Ensuring sustainable development, however, necessitates a strategic planning for water resources. The study develops all viable strategies for the region using Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis. Due to inability of the SWOT model to rank the alternatives, the developed strategies are ranked using Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) models based on specified sustainable development criteria. The ranking is implemented using the compensatory models of Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and the non-compensatory model of ELimination and Choice Translating REality (ELECTRE III). The results of all MCDM models introduce water transfer as the worst strategy for the region. Because of the uncertainty in the relative importance of specified criteria, sensitivity analysis is done for MCDM models by altering the criteria weights. The results show that the ELECTRE III method has lower sensitivity than the SAWand AHP methods to changes in the weights. Also, the compensatory methods exhibits a high dependency to the weights of some dominant criteria. Therefore, this research reveals that the rankings obtained from the ELECTRE III method are more reliable for decision makers to ensure a sustainable development in the region.

4 Conclusion

In this study, we used the combination of SWOT analysis (to develop the strategies) and three different MCDM methods (to rank the strategies) for implementing water resources strategic planning to achieve sustainable development in Shahrood, Iran. The SWOT matrix was created to identify nine strategies considering internal and external factors including five strengths, five weaknesses, four opportunities, and three threats in the study area. Then, we employed the compensatory MCDM models of SAW and AHP and the non-compensatory model of ELECTRE III to rank the SWOT developed strategies based on six criteria. Based on the AHP method, water transfer strategy gained less than 50% score, the minimum acceptable score of a strategy to be recognized consistent with the objectives of sustainable development. This strategy also gained the lowest score in SAW method and the worst ranking in ELECTRE III method. To evaluate the reliability of the MCDM models results, sensitivity analysis of changes in criteria weights was implemented and showed that ELECTRE III method has lower sensitivity than SAW and AHP methods, especially for changes on the two highest criteria weights. This occurs because ELECTRE III considers the fuzzy nature of decision maker’s preferences by applying three thresholds (indifference (q), preference (p), and veto (v)). This implied high dependency of the compensatory methods to the weights of some dominant criteria. Therefore, the results of ELECTRE III are deemed superior in this study for use by decision makers to ensure a sustainable development in the region.