Estimating the Potential Impacts of Irrigation Water Pricing Using Multicriteria Decision Making Modelling. An Application to Northern Greece |
| |
Authors: | D Latinopoulos |
| |
Affiliation: | (1) Department of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR-54124 Thessaloniki, Greece |
| |
Abstract: | A great challenge of the current European water policy is the implementation of volumetric water pricing in the agricultural
sector, especially of Mediterranean countries, where irrigation is a necessary precondition of agricultural production and
farmers’ income, but also the major consumer of water. The overall aim of the present work is to develop a methodology that
will be suitable for the estimation of the potential environmental, economic and social impacts of irrigation water pricing.
For this purpose, Multi-Attribute Utility Theory is implemented in order to simulate agricultural decision making at various
water pricing scenarios. Water demand functions are then elicited, by means of the best crop and water allocation (farmers’
decisions) in each scenario. The European Water Framework Directive recommends that any issue concerning water resources management
(including water pricing policies) should be developed at the river basin level. In this framework, a cluster analysis is
performed to partition the river basin area (namely, Loudias River Basin, located in Northern Greece) into a small number
of homogeneous sub-regions. The differential impact of water pricing in each region is then analyzed, and finally, an average
water demand function is formulated for the whole river basin. |
| |
Keywords: | " target="_blank"> Irrigation water pricing Multicriteria analysis Crop-water functions Optimal resource allocation Water demand River basin management |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|