Multiple Criteria Analysis and
Water Resources Risk
Management
• David L. Olson
– James & H.K. Stuart Chancellor’s
Distinguished Chair
– Professor, Department of Management
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Overview
• Multiple criteria in Water Resource Risk
Management
• Interactive Decision Maps
– Russian method
• LP to generate alternatives
• Visualize more than three criteria
– Useful for problems with many potential
variants
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Past Work of Others – library search
• Water balance, climate change and land-use planning in the Pear
Harbor Basin, Hawaii
– Giambelluca, Ridgley & Nullet Water Resources Development 12:4, 1996
• The Peconic River: Concerns associated with different risk evaluations
for fish consumption
– Burger & Gochfeld, Jounral of Environmental Planning & Management
48:6, 2005
• Evaluation of drinking water treatment technology: An entropy-based
fuzzy application
– Chowdhury & Husain, Journal of Environmental Engineering, Oct 2006
• Charting a path for innovative toilet technology using multicriteria
decision analysis
– Borsuk, Mareur, Lienert & Larsen, Environmental Science & Technology
42:6, 2008
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Criteria
Chowdhury & Husain
(2006) Drinking Water
Borsuk et al. (2008)
Johnson & White (2010)
Water quality protection Drinking Water
Cancer risk
Quality of life
Health
Noncancer risk
Costs
Cost
Technology availability
Health risk
Testing
Management factors
Environmental quality
Treatment
Chemical performance
Fairness
Cost of technology
Scientists – publication
Cost of chemicals
Scientists – water quality
Cost of operation
Cost of maintenance
Cost of accessories
Cost - Watershed
Corps of Engineers - Criteria
Middle
Mississippi
Delaware
River
Great Lakes
Virgin River
(UT, AZ, NV)
Forests
Wetlands
Habitat
Agriculture
Aquatics
Recreation
Floodplain
Water quality
Invasive species
Economics
Cost-benefit
Ecology
Connectivity
-(native species)
Hydrology
Geomorphic
-(diversity)
Invasive species
Floodplain
Invasive species
Land use planning
Endangered species
Water supply & quality
Wildfire
Channel maintenance
Storm runoff, salinity
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct
2011
Visualization of Multiplecriterion Decision Problems
and
Search for Efficient Decisions
Alexander V. Lotov
Russian Academy of Sciences, Computing Center, and
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Complications related to old approaches:
example of water quality planning —
cost (F) versus oil products pollution (Z5)
Feasible Goals Method (FGM) /
Interactive Decision Maps (IDM)
technique
The FGM/IDM is a graphic form of the
goal approach. Its main features are:
• approximation of the Edgeworth-Pareto
Hull (EPH), i.e. the variety of feasible
goals and all dominated criterion points;
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Real-life application of the FGM
Decision support system for
decision screening in water
quality planning
Russian Federal programme
Revival of the Volga River
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Water quality to be improved in a large river
basin
DSS to support the search for reasonable
strategies of investment in wastewater
treatment facilities
Consider both cost and its allocation between
regions
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
 DSS calibrated for the Oka River
 One of the largest tributaries of the Volga River
 Seven regions are located at the main flow of the river
 The river-bed was split into fourteen segments that are
related to the locations of the regions
 Six most important pollutants
 Suspension
 Phosphates
 Nitrates
 Oil products
 Ferrous combinations
 Biological oxygen demand
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Oka River Basin
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
• Users apply the DSS for the search for preferable
investment strategies
• A large list of performance indicators is provided
to users
– They can specify screening criteria directly in the list
– Two kinds of potential criteria
environmental indicators - describe resulting
pollutant concentrations in a region or in the river
economic indicators - include the total cost of the
project and investments in particular regions
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
DSS allows user to specify two to
seven performance indicators
from the list to be the screening
criteria. Constraints on the
indicator values can be imposed.
Here the total cost of the
project, the investment in the
fourth region and the
investment in the seventh
region have been already
specified to be screening
criteria.
After criteria were specified,
computer approximates the
Edgeworth-Pareto Hull (EPH),
which is contains all feasible
combinations of the criterion
values and all criterion points
dominated by them.
Usually user desires to explore
three criteria at once:
he/she explores decision maps
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
To explore dependencies
between more than three
criteria, user can animate the
decision map or use
matrices of decision maps
(snap-shots of decision map
animation)
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Then, user selects one of the
decision maps and selects the
preferred goal
(cross in the following picture)
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
The related water quality
improvement project is computed
automatically
(displayed in the third column of the table)
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011
Conclusions
• Water resource management involves many
tradeoffs
• Many criteria could be considered
• US Federal Gov’t tends to focus on costbenefit
– Water resources agencies in the past mandated
multiple criteria
• Lotov’s IDM offers an interesting means to
visualize tradeoffs
Climate, Water and Ecosystems - Oct 2011