ANALYZING WATER-RESOURCES ALTERNATIVES AND HANDLING CRITERIA BY MULTICRITERION DECISION TECHNIQUES

In this paper, a hydro-ecological management problem is analyzed by me ans of multi criterion decision-making (MCDM) techniques. The MCDM tec hniques used are (1) preference ranking organization method for enrich ment evaluations (PROMETHEE-I, II), (2) geometrical analysis for inter active assistance (GAIA), (3) multi criterion Q-analysis (MCQA-I, II, III), (4) compromise programming (CP) and (5) cooperative game theory (CGT). An Austrian case study is presented to illustrate the advantage s and disadvantages of the methods. The aim is to identify the so-call ed satisfactory water resources projects being designed at the Austria n part of Danube river. Moreover, handling of criteria in MCDM is disc ussed. Criteria analysis is important to understand the structure of t he problem and also, in case of large criterion sets, a preference ord er on the criteria may help to determine the redundant and less import ant criteria in terms of discriminating power on the alternatives. GAI A and MCQA-III appear to be the only methods among the ones used that enable an analysis of the discriminating power of each criterion. In t his paper, some modifications of the indices used in MCQA-III are prop osed and shown to perform better in ranking criteria than earlier ones . It has been also shown that the use of two principal components in G AIA analysis might lead to misinterpretation of the real problem. In o ur case study, there are 12 alternatives and 33 criteria. The criteria consists of mainly three conflicting types of interest: economic, eco logical and sociological. The alternatives include the construction of several hydropower plants as well as a national park. The comparison of the results show that there is not really a substantial ranking dif ference between the methods. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limited