Decision-making Policies for the Salgado River Basin, Ceará – Brazil (original) (raw)
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Evaluating Management Strategies in Paraguacu River Basin by Analytic Hierarchy Process
An approach is proposed for evaluating water management strategies in river basins. Reasonably large sets of criterions and objectives are manipulated during a three-phase process by appropriate shrinking and enlarging related decision hierarchies. In the first phase an unrestricted set of management interests are grouped into (1) long-term, and (2) middle-and short-term decision context by creating decision hierarchies and evaluating them by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). After refining the hierarchies by deleting dominated elements, management plans are introduced at their fingertips and so enlarged hierarchies are repeatedly evaluated by AHP in the second phase. Only two bottom levels of hierarchies is necessary to consider by this break-in evaluating procedure. Size of decision hierarchies is rationally preserved in both phases considering limited human abilities in handling numerous decision elements while comparing them, and difficulties in attaining desired decision consistency. The last phase aggregates weights of management plans derived in the second phase for two hierarchies and performs a final ranking of the management alternatives. The Paraguacu river basin in Brazil is used as a case study. This is the most important alluvium in the state of Bahia, which spreads out over 55 thousand square kilometres. Within the basin there are 84 municipalities with nearly 2 million inhabitants. Prevailing water management conditions are semi-arid and major water uses are human and animal supply, irrigation and low river flow augmentation for ecological purposes. Three management plans for a 40-year time horizon were evaluated and ranked.
Journal of Environmental Management, 2011
Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is a family of decision-making tools that can be used in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) procedures to ensure that environmental, social and economic aspects are integrated into the design of human development strategies and planning, in order to increase the contribution of the environment and natural resources to poverty reduction. The aim of this paper is to highlight the contribution of a particular multi-criteria technique, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), in two stages of the SEA procedure applied to water programmes in developing countries: the comparison of alternatives and monitoring. This proposal was validated through its application to a case study in Brazilian semi-arid region. The objective was to select and subsequently monitor the most appropriate programme for safe water availability. On the basis of the SEA results, a project was identified and implemented with successful results. In terms of comparisons of alternatives, AHP meets the requirements of human development programme assessment, including the importance of simplicity, a multidisciplinary and flexible approach, and a focus on the beneficiaries' concerns. With respect to monitoring, the study shows that AHP contributes to SEA by identifying the most appropriate indicators, in order to control the impacts of a project.
Revista Brasileira de Engenharia Agricola e Ambiental, 2021
The Japaratuba River Basin (JRB), located in Sergipe, Brazil, has accelerated economic development due to oil exploration and an increase in the sugarcane and corn monocultures. Thus, environmental degradation has increased in the basin. Given the importance of the water supply that the hydrographic basin has for the state of Sergipe, and the need to balance its economic growth with environmental conservation, this study had the objective to analyze the Japaratuba River Basin Plan (JRBP), published in 2015, and propose the priority scale for the execution of programs arranged under the scope of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). Thus, the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process method (AHP) was used with data collection (water supply and distribution, sanitation, and forest cover) for the years 2018, 2019, and 2020, associating Geoprocessing techniques. It was verified that among the criteria analyzed for the definition of the priority scale, those associated with the restoration of ecosystems, sanitation, and hygiene, and water quality were the ones with the highest priority for execution according to the levels of criticality observed. The multi-criteria analysis expands the context of environmental criteria to be observed in further reviews of the JRBP; and expands the strategic environmental vision in the integrated management processes of the basin.
Water Resources Management, 2010
Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is a relatively new approach in Bolivia. However, it is now generally accepted that this approach needs to be established in order to find sustainable solutions for development and is actively promoted by the Water Ministry, especially in environmentally fragile regions, such as the Lake Poopo basin. The Lake Poopo basin is one of the poorest regions in the Bolivian Altiplano. It is confronted with severe water scarcity during the dry season, leading to low water quality, a high water-poverty index and low values of the watershed sustainability index. Furthermore, salinization and environmental degradation of soil and water are forcing people to migrate to urban areas. These are some of the factors underlying an ever-increasing complexity in integrated water resources management in the region. This paper proposes and develops a Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) in the Lake Poopo basin, based on economic, social and environmental criteria in an uncertain decision environment in order to support stakeholders in managing their water resources. Saaty's analytical hierarchy process (AHP) theory is applied here to solve the MCDA and to identify the alternatives using the highest expected utility value. The paper identifies the best solutions for existing conflicts, while promoting interaction with stakeholders and instruments in order to reach a sustainable strategy for water resources management in this water-scarce region.
Multi-criteria decision-making to support sustainable water management in a mining complex in Brazil
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2013
Water management in mining is a significant issue for sustainability due to the strong dependence on this resource, especially for those operations with beneficiation plants. This is particularly relevant for mining operations located in the Southeast region of Brazil, which concentrates most part of the country's population as well as most part of the mining facilities, but a small portion of the water available in the territory. This paper presents a case study of selection of sustainable water management strategies for a mining complex located in this region. A stepwise process for incorporating environmental risks into the decision-making using a multi-criteria approach and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was developed and applied in this case study, with corporate image, representing part of the social dimension, environmental and economic as the main decision criteria. This stepwise process proved to be a robust tool for supporting the evaluation and selection of alternatives in the case study, with potential to be used in other corporate decision contexts where environmental risks are relevant.
Applied Environmental Research
The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is an approach for decision making with complex problems that can be applied in water resources management. This paper reviews the literature onapplication of AHP in water resource management from 2009-2013 in 46 peer reviewed journal articles, analyzes the strengths and limitations of the technique using SWOT analysis, and then focuses on its utility when integrated with other methods for water resource management in Thailand. The findings indicate that AHP can be utilized for all types of water resource manage-ment focused on criteria concerning social, economic and environmental factors. Furthermore, the efficacy of AHP can be enhanced when integrated with other techniques. Application of AHP in Thailand could be combined with the Delphi technique to identify key criteria for resolving bias problems regarding goal and criteria.
The management of a water asset is becoming more complicated and demanding, not only to keep the water asset in good condition but also in an optimal manner. To overcome these challenges water asset should be managed according to the critical level of each asset that is determined base on the identified critical criteria for each asset hierarchy. The main purpose of this study is to identify the critical level of each asset by using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The research methodology consists of a series of focus group workshops and the utilization of analytic hierarchy process. A series of focus group workshops with subject matter experts in the water industry will be conducted to produce a hierarchical framework for water assets through a sequence of pair-wise comparison judgments. Analytic hierarchy process will be utilized to derive the multi criteria decision making (MCDM) preferences from stakeholders and to compute the corresponding relative weights of their decision preferences towards the asset criticalities. By using this method, the water industry will be able to analyze the quantitative information and develop a single framework for the water assets. It will be beneficial in water asset management and serve it purposed for transparency, effective and efficiency in managing water assets for future.
IAEME PUBLICATION, 2021
This study aims at developing a procedure by integrating sustainability criteria for Urban Drinking Water Systems (UDWS) and determine their relative importance in quantitative terms. In this study, the technical, environmental, economic, social and institutional criteria were identified and sub divided into factors and sub-factors to aid in evaluating sustainability of UDWSs. Expert stakeholders, belonging to all the fields of expertise relevant to UDWSs, were involved to acquire their opinion as an input, to estimate relative weight for these criteria. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to transfigure the subjectivities of opinion into numeric values. Based on the outcomes of this study, environmental criterion was deemed to be the most important, with a sustainability score of 27.86%, even though more than 80% of the respondents belonged to the non-environmental group. On the other hand, institutional criteria acquired the least i.e., 14.11% weightage. The same trend was observed in case of relative weights of the different factors. The water source quality attained the highest priority of 14.89%, followed by source capacity and social awareness, securing 12.97% and 10.74% weightage respectively. Institutional capacity was assigned the least weightage with 5.94% of overall sustainability score. The results conclude that environmental aspect of UDWSs is of core significance for sustainability of overall system. Inability to maintain source quality and capacity may seriously compromise the ability of system to sustain. Moreover, social aspects may not be ignored during policy making, designing, executing and maintaining the infrastructure for a sustainable UDWS.
Analytic Hierarchy Process for Stakeholder Participation in Integrated Water Resources Management
Engineering Journal
This paper focuses on the applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) to develop a model for water resource management in the Pranburi watershed by using stakeholder participation. The hierarchy model structure of the Pranburi watershed was developed by the experts based on IWRM and classified into 4 criteria, 15 sub-criteria, and 3 alternatives. The questionnaire method was the tool used for obtaining a weighing for comparison between the pairs of criteria obtained from community representatives. The finding revealed that the important criteria are the environmental factors. The highest ranked of the alternatives is the watershed planning strategy. These results implied that community focused stakeholder participation in the decision-making process for water resources in Pranburi watershed gave a positive outcome. This research clearly presented the capability of the AHP approach integrates with IWRM principle for water resource planning. The AHP approach can analyze the community representative's relevant data before decision making, by applying pairwise comparison of the AHP technique, can reduce bias during decision making. More importantly, the government should support collaboration with local officers and the community in the decision making policy on water resource planning.
Water Science & Technology: Water Supply, 2017
The aim of this paper is to develop a methodological tool for comprehensive evaluation of sustainability of water supply and sanitation services (WSSs) considering all quantitative and qualitative effective factors using the analytic hierarchy process. The proposed method has a significant advantage that determines which aspects have more priority and which ones are less important; hence, it gives a very good guideline for planning and implementation of a country's projects for sustainable development in WSSs. Additionally, the application of the proposed method is shown for Algeria as a case study. six dimensions, 12 criteria and 50 indicators were defined as three different levels of hierarchy for this purpose. Moreover, the matrices of pairwise comparisons were obtained by judgments of 12 experts in different involved fields including policy makers, managers and scientists. According to the results, the most important dimensions were economic (38.3%) and technical (26.1%) aspects. Furthermore, the financial autonomy (18.7%) and technical performance (18.4%) had the highest and transparency (2%) and organization (2.8%) had the lowest weights among all criteria. In addition, indicators with a high overall weight are: operation and maintenance cost, grand balanced budget, reliability, small budget balance, opportunity cost and state subsidy rates for investments.