Multicriterion decision making in irrigation planning

Selection of the best compromise irrigation plan is examined in the multi o bjective context. The study deals with three conflicting objectives: net be nefits, agricultural production and labour employment. Three-stage procedur e is adopted combining multi objective optimisation, cluster analysis and m ulticriterion decision-making (MCDM) methods. Two MCDM methods, namely, PRO METHEE-2 and a newly developed method EXPROM-2, are employed in the evaluat ion. Spearman rank correlation test is used to assess the correlation betwe en the ranks. The above methodology is applied to a case study of Sri Ram S agar Project, Andhra Pradesh, India. Sensitivity analysis studies indicated that ranking pattern is quite robust to parameter changes as far as the fi rst two positions are concerned. It is found that net benefits, agricultura l production and labour employment per hectare on average for the culturabl e command area are 8980 rupees ($225), 3.73 tonnes and 242 man-days, respec tively, in the best compromise plan. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rig hts reserved.