Conflicts and resolutions in managing water allocation at the watershed scale

Multiple runs of a river basin model produced information about water allocation under different users’ priorities, creating a set of allocation scenarios as possible decision alternatives. To identify the most desired scenario that will, expectedly, be more readily accepted and implemented, involvement of stakeholders and reaching the consensus among them in evaluating scenarios are essential. This article describes methodology for integrating multi-criteria optimization as an efficient tool for the evaluation of scenarios in a group context, with river basin simulation-optimization models. Methodology was developed within the scope of the bilateral project Serbia–Portugal, and it consisted of five phases: defining the preference schemes of allocation, running the ACQUANET model, evaluating the criteria and strategies with analytic hierarchy process, aggregation and initial search for consensus in subgroups, and obtaining the final consensus converged result (best management strategy). The approach was tested on the water allocation problem in the Nadela watershed in Vojvodina Province in Serbia, with participation of 23 stakeholders. Promising results recommended the approach for the testing in different conditions in the area near Bragança in northeast Portugal (Sabor watershed).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

PESFOR-W: Improving the design and environmental effectiveness of woodlands for water Payments for Ecosystem Services

ABSTRACT: The EU Water Framework Directive aims to ensure restoration of Europe?s water bodies to ?good ecological status? by 2027. Many Member States will struggle to meet this target, with around half of EU river catchments currently reporting below standard water quality. Diffuse pollution from agriculture represents a major pressure, affecting over 90% of river basins. Accumulating evidence shows that recent improvements to agricultural practices are benefiting water quality but in many cases will be insufficient to achieve WFD objectives. There is growing support for land use change to help bridge the gap, with a particular focus on targeted tree planting to intercept and reduce the delivery of diffuse pollutants to water. This form of integrated catchment management offers multiple benefits to society but a significant cost to landowners and managers. New economic instruments, in combination with spatial targeting, need to be developed to ensure cost effective solutions - including tree planting for water benefits - are realised. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are flexible, incentive-based mechanisms that could play an important role in promoting land use change to deliver water quality targets. The PESFOR-W COST Action will consolidate learning from existing woodlands for water PES schemes in Europe and help standardize approaches to evaluating the environmental effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of woodland measures. It will also create a European network through which PES schemes can be facilitated, extended and improved, for example by incorporating other ecosystem services linking with aims of the wider forestscarbon policy nexus

First-Level Transitivity Rule Method for Filling in Incomplete Pair-Wise Comparison Matrices in the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract: The paper discusses the problem of performing the prioritization of decision elements within the multicriteria optimization method, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), with incomplete information. An approach is proposed on how to fill in the gap in the pair-wise comparison matrix generated within an AHP standard procedure; that is, to reproduce one missing judgment of the decision maker while assuring the reproduced judgment belongs to the same ratio scale used while other judgments are elicited. The first-level transitivity rule (FLTR) approach is proposed based on screening matrix entries in the neighborhood of a missing one. Scaling (where necessary) and geometric averaging of screened entries allows filling of the gap in the matrix and later prioritization of involved decision elements by the eigenvector, or any other known method. Illustrative examples are provided to compare the proposed method with the other two known methods also aimed to fill-in gaps in AHP matrices. The results indicate some similarities in attaining consistency. However, unlike other methods, the FLTR assures coherency of the generating process in a sense that all numeric values in a matrix (original entries, plus one generated) come from the same ratio scale and have correct element-wise semantic equivalents

Fuzzy AHP Assessment of Urban Parks Quality and Importance in Novi Sad City, Serbia

This paper proposes an AHP approach that utilizes the fuzzy extent model to prioritize five city parks based on their present quality and projected importance for Novi Sad City, the capital of Vojvodina Province, in Serbia. The study involved an expert evaluation of a set of eight criteria to identify the most relevant subset of criteria for a detailed park assessment. The park evaluation took into account uncertainties (fuzziness), the expert’s risk tolerance, and different levels of optimism and pessimism. The obtained results could serve when defining upcoming city plans and management agendas related to green areas in the city. The proposed fuzzy-based methodology can be extended to group decision-making scenarios by involving more experts and stakeholder representatives. The park weights obtained through the fuzzy AHP methodology described in this paper can aid city planners and politicians in the strategic allocation of financial, organizational, and human resources for parks

First-Level Transitivity Rule Method for Filling in Incomplete Pair-Wise Comparison Matrices in the Analytic Hierarchy Process

The paper discusses the problem of performing the prioritization of decision elements within the multicriteria optimization method, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), with incomplete information. An approach is proposed on how to fill in the gap in the pair-wise comparison matrix generated within an AHP standard procedure; that is, to reproduce one missing judgment of the decision maker while assuring the reproduced judgment belongs to the same ratio scale used while other judgments are elicited. The first-level transitivity rule (FLTR) approach is proposed based on screening matrix entries in the neighborhood of a missing one. Scaling (where necessary) and geometric averaging of screened entries allows filling of the gap in the matrix and later prioritization of involved decision elements by the eigenvector, or any other known method. Illustrative examples are provided to compare the proposed method with the other two known methods also aimed to fill-in gaps in AHP matrices. The results indicate some similarities in attaining consistency. However, unlike other methods, the FLTR assures coherency of the generating process in a sense that all numeric values in a matrix (original entries, plus one generated) come from the same ratio scale and have correct element-wise semantic equivalents

Causality and Importance of Sustainable Forestry Goals: Strategic and Tactical Assessment by DEMATEL and AHP

This paper presents the combined use of standard DEMATEL and AHP methodologies in assessing a selected set of criteria for evaluating sustainable forestry goals. Creating a decision-making framework with two participating individuals (the authors of this research) enabled the comparison of individually obtained solutions with the aggregated solutions derived by two methodologies. The use of DEMATEL enabled strategic viewing of the causality relations among criteria and a limited indication of cardinal information (weights) about their importance. Different from DEMATEL, the use of AHP is considered a control mechanism in tactical decision-making situations such as the usage of standard multi-criteria methods for solving forestry-related allocation or selection problems. AHP’s role is to derive weights of criteria in a very structured environment based on assumption that criteria are independent and only their mutual importance is relevant for further decision-making. Individual solutions and aggregation schemes for creating group solutions are compared for both methodologies. Critical analysis is given for different aspects of their combined use when treating causalities and the importance of criteria in evaluations of long-term sustainable forestry goals

An Approach to Developing the Multicriteria Optimal Forest Management Plan: The “Fruska Gora” National Park Case Study

This paper proposes a decision-making framework that integrates Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), Best-Worst (BW), and Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) methods in a forestry management problem. Namely, the application of the proposed framework has been shown in the case study area of the National Park “Fruska Gora” in Serbia. The decision-making problem included five criteria (biodiversity protection, wilderness protection, promotion of tourism, promotion of education function, and sustainable use of natural resources) and four alternatives—management plans (“business as usual”, “eco-tourism”, “protection of natural ecosystems” and “use of natural resources”). The results were focused on proclaiming a winning alternative in a multi-criteria context and have been tested for the different risk attitudes: risk-prone, risk-neutral, and risk-averse. For the risk-prone scenario, the winning alternative was “protection of natural ecosystems”, while the risk-neutral and risk-averse scenarios recognized “eco-tourism” as the winning alternative. The same procedure can be repeated for many other forest management tasks that require multiple criteria setting and risk attitude analysis