Multicriteria decision making for integrated water resources management in an irrigation scheme

The performance objectives of any irrigation scheme are productivity, equity, adequacy, reliability, surety index and frequency index. These objectives conflict with each other. Therefore there is a need of considering multiple objectives when making decisions. An approach based on multi criteria decision making (MCDM) technique of compromise programming is proposed and presented in this paper. It is used to identify solutions that are closest to the ideal solution as determined by some measure of distance. It consists of identifying different performance objectives that contribute to “overall performance index” of irrigation management in an irrigation scheme. The weights are assigned to each PO that reflects the relative importance of that PO compared to other POs. The applicability of the developed approach is demonstrated with the help of semi-hypothetical case study on Nazare Medium Irrigation Scheme, Maharashtra State, India. The results indicated that the irrigation strategies based on MCDM differ for head and middle; and tail reach farmers.