Risk Management of Drinking Water Supply in Critical Conditions Using Fuzzy PROMETHEE V Technique

Water crisis management in drinking water supply systems is a crucial issue. Many different natural and unnatural disasters cause great damages to these systems. Prioritizing effective strategies by expert decision-makers before any incidence can greatly reduce this damage. Moreover, cost minimization in the provision of these strategies is very essential as the urban crisis management organizations are financially limited. Therefore, this study provided a model for the selection of the most appropriate drinking water supply strategies in crisis conditions, considering possible limitations. Fuzzy PROMTHEE V, a multi-criteria decision-making method, is a new approach developed in this research to help the decision-makers in selecting a set of possible alternatives for drinking water supply management, which are ranked based on five criteria determined by decision-makers (water supply reliability, implementation speed and simplicity, implementation cost, social satisfaction, water quality) and budget limitation as the constraint for the optimization problem. This model was applied in a case study of Tehran city in Iran. Due to the uncertainties in expert opinions and parameters needed for drinking water supply risk management, this model was solved with three fuzzy methods and one non-fuzzy method, and the results were compared. Findings showed that strengthening passive defense in water supply, transportation, and distribution systems; providing water consumption management; encouraging people to save water for emergency conditions and planning to exploit popular forces and performing maneuvers are top-ranked alternatives.