Fuzzy relation analysis for multicriteria water resources management

This paper is a summary of the efforts of Working Committee 4 (WC4) for the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin water levels reference study. A fuzzy relation analysis (FRA) model was used to analyze (including ordering, rat ing, ranking, and screening) numerous disparate alternatives that had accum ulated over the course of WC4's study. Compared with other multicriteria me thods for impact assessment under uncertainty, the FRA has advantages in da ta availability, computational requirements, and results interpretation. Re lative strengths and weaknesses of different alternatives were evaluated by relating their impacts to a number of evaluation subcriteria. The results indicated that reasonable solutions have been generated, which were helpful for govemments/stakeholders to obtain insights into the interrelationships between different system components. They, with results of other Internati onal Joint Commission research projects, also provided useful bases for ass essing the relative effectiveness of different governmental actions to redu ce the adverse impacts of fluctuating lake levels.