Evaluation of River Water Transfer Alternatives with the TODIM Multi-Criteria Decision Making Method

Access to water as the core of sustainable development is essential for the socio-economic development of any region. Water security is challenging, especially in arid and semi-arid regions such as Iran, where changes in the temporal distribution of precipitation contribute to the inherent shortage of water resources. Therefore, it is necessary to choose strategies that can advance this heterogeneous distribution towards balance. One of these strategies consists of inter-basin water transfers. This work presents a methodology for selecting the best alternative for river-water transfer relying on multi-criteria decision making. The method is evaluated in the Khodaafarin irrigation network (Ardabil province, Iran). Environmental, economic, technical, and socio-cultural criteria and related sub-criteria are weighted with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The multi-criteria decision making method (TODIM) is applied to rank the management alternatives. The results of the AHP model show that the sub-criterion of investment costs with a weight of 0.264 is the most effective criterion for choosing the most suitable water-transfer alternative. Also, the results of the TODIM decision-making method indicate the best-ranked alternative consists of water transfer through an existing earthen canal to a pumping lift station, construction of the pumping station at 0 + 400 km, and water conveyance by a concrete canal, with dominance degree of −13.72. The second-best alternative (i.e. water transfer to the pumping station by gravity pipe, construction of the pumping station, and water conveyance by concrete canal) has a dominance degree of −15.54.