Multicriterion Analysis for Sustainable Water Resources Planning: A Case Study in Spain

The present article demonstrates the implementation of Multicriterion Decision Making (MCDM) analysis for a case study of Flumen Monegros irrigation area in the Huesca province of Spain. The criteria used to rank alternativesconsist of (1) economic factors including initial cost ofirrigation system, maintenance cost, profitability of crops,extent of European subsidies; (2) environmental factors whichcomprise water volume, water quality after irrigation, efficiency of the use of water, resistance to floods or droughts; (3) Social factors including employment of rurallabour, area non-cultivated. Alternative policies areformulated by mixing factors such as irrigation system, waterpricing, water allocation, crop distribution, fertiliser use,subsidies received. Multicriterion Sorting Technique (MCST)ELECTRE-TRI is employed to reduce the large size payoff matrixto predefined categories for further usage of MCDM techniques.Five MCDM techniques, namely, PROMETHEE-2, EXPROM-2, ELECTRE-3, ELECTRE-4, and Compromise Programming (CP) are employed torank the alternatives. Spearman rank correlation coefficientis employed to assess the correlation coefficient between theranking patterns obtained by the above MCDM techniques.Additive ranking principle is used for group decision makinganalysis. Results indicate that five MCDM techniques choosethe same alternative strategy as the preferred one.