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Problems have a high rank in decision making when they are both urgent and important. Accordingly, water has not earned the attention it deserves in public policy agenda because under normal circumstances it is not viewed as an urgent matter in the eyes of the public and politicians. By creating a sense of urgency, extreme events such as droughts, floods, conflicts, and migrations can create opportunities for implementing some essential policy reforms that would be politically costly otherwise. So, despite their high short-term costs, extreme natural and societal events have the potential to increase the resilience of water systems in the long run. It is argued here that the societal and political sense of urgency about water must be promoted through public outreach and information dissemination. Otherwise, for useful reforms and long-term improvements, we will rely on costly and risky extreme events that sometimes have the potential to fully collapse the human-natural system-of-systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanisation and climate change are augmenting the uncertainty surrounding the future state of the world’s water resource and are resulting in cities experiencing growing levels of risk of pluvial flooding. Drainage infrastructure is generally built using the paradigm of ‘predict and optimise’; however, this approach fails to account for erroneous predictions. This can result in drainage systems delivering insufficient levels of flood protection. Irrespective of these uncertainties new drainage systems must be built, and existing ones adapted in such a way that they remain reliable. This work presents a critical analysis of the drivers of change of urban pluvial flooding and the uncertainties surrounding urban flood planning; thereby highlighting the shortcomings of current planning methodologies. Different Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) frameworks are then explored and it is shown that they offer an improved ability to design reliable urban flood systems regardless of highly uncertain future conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In practice, selecting an energy project for development requires balancing criteria and competing stakeholder priorities to identify the best alternative. Energy source selection can be modeled as multi-criteria decision-maker problems to provide quantitative support to reconcile technical, economic, environmental, social, and political factors with respect to the stakeholders' interests. Decision making among these complex interactions should also account for the uncertainty present in the input data. In response, this work develops a stochastic decision analysis framework to evaluate alternatives by involving stakeholders to identify both quantitative and qualitative selection criteria and performance metrics which carry uncertainties. The developed framework is illustrated using a case study from Fairbanks, Alaska, where decision makers and residents must decide on a new source of energy for heating and electricity. We approach this problem in a five step methodology: (1) engaging experts (role players) to develop criteria of project performance; (2) collecting a range of quantitative and qualitative input information to determine the performance of each proposed solution according to the selected criteria; (3) performing a Monte-Carlo analysis to capture uncertainties given in the inputs; (4) applying multi-criteria decision-making, social choice (voting), and fallback bargaining methods to account for three different levels of cooperation among the stakeholders; and (5) computing an aggregate performance index (API) score for each alternative based on its performance across criteria and cooperation levels. API scores communicate relative performance between alternatives. In this way, our methodology maps uncertainty from the input data to reflect risk in the decision and incorporates varying degrees of cooperation into the analysis to identify an optimal and practical alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimal risk-based levee designs are usually developed for economic efficiency. However, in river systems with multiple levees, the planning and maintenance of different levees are controlled by different agencies or groups. For example, along many rivers, levees on opposite riverbanks constitute a simple leveed river system with each levee designed and controlled separately. Collaborative planning of the two levees can be economically optimal for the whole system. Independent and self-interested landholders on opposite riversides often are willing to separately determine their individual optimal levee plans, resulting in a less efficient leveed river system from an overall society-wide perspective (the tragedy of commons). We apply game theory to simple leveed river system planning where landholders on each riverside independently determine their optimal risk-based levee plans. Outcomes from noncooperative games are analyzed and compared with the overall economically optimal outcome, which minimizes net flood cost system-wide. The system-wide economically optimal solution generally transfers residual flood risk to the lower-valued side of the river, but is often impractical without compensating for flood risk transfer to improve outcomes for all individuals involved. Such compensation can be determined and implemented with landholders' agreements on collaboration to develop an economically optimal plan. By examining iterative multiple-shot noncooperative games with reversible and irreversible decisions, the costs of myopia for the future in making levee planning decisions show the significance of considering the externalities and evolution path of dynamic water resource problems to improve decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water allocation is a growing concern in a developing world where limited resources like fresh water are in greater demand by more parties. Negotiations over allocations often involve multiple groups with disparate social, economic, and political status and needs, who are seeking a management solution for a wide range of demands. Optimization techniques for identifying the Pareto-optimal (social planner solution) to multi-criteria multi-participant problems are commonly implemented, although often reaching agreement for this solution is difficult. In negotiations with multiple-decision makers, parties who base decisions on individual rationality may find the social planner solution to be unfair, thus creating a need to evaluate the willingness to cooperate and practicality of a cooperative allocation solution, i.e., the solution's stability. This paper suggests seeking solutions for multi-participant resource allocation problems through an economics-based power index allocation method. This method can inform on allocation schemes that quantify a party's willingness to participate in a negotiation rather than opt for no agreement. Through comparison of the suggested method with a range of distance-based multi-criteria decision making rules, namely, least squares, MAXIMIN, MINIMAX, and compromise programming, this paper shows that optimality and stability can produce different allocation solutions. The mismatch between the socially-optimal alternative and the most stable alternative can potentially result in parties leaving the negotiation as they may be too dissatisfied with their resource share. This finding has important policy implications as it justifies why stakeholders may not accept the socially optimal solution in practice, and underlies the necessity of considering stability where it may be more appropriate to give up an unstable Pareto-optimal solution for an inferior stable one. Authors suggest assessing the stability of an allocation solution as an additional component to an analysis that seeks to distribute water in a negotiated process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Game theory provides a useful framework for studying Multi-Criteria Decision Making problems. This paper suggests modeling Multi-Criteria Decision Making problems as strategic games and solving them using non-cooperative game theory concepts. The suggested method can be used to prescribe non-dominated solutions and also can be used as a method to predict the outcome of a decision making problem. Non-cooperative stability definitions for solving the games allow consideration of non-cooperative behaviors, often neglected by other methods which assume perfect cooperation among decision makers. To deal with the uncertainty in input variables a Monte-Carlo Game Theory (MCGT) approach is suggested which maps the stochastic problem into many deterministic strategic games. The games are solved using non-cooperative stability definitions and the results include possible effects of uncertainty in input variables on outcomes. The method can handle multi-criteria multi-decision-maker problems with uncertainty. The suggested method does not require criteria weighting, developing a compound decision objective, and accurate quantitative (cardinal) information as it simplifies the decision analysis by solving problems based on qualitative (ordinal) information, reducing the computational burden substantially. The MCGT method is applied to analyze California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta problem. The suggested method provides insights, identifies non-dominated alternatives, and predicts likely decision outcomes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Within river basins different social, economic, political and physical subsystems interact. When making decisions, policy makers should be aware of such interactions as any new policy will affect more than one subsystem. To determine the adequacy of a specific management policy, an integrated study is needed of a complicated water management system in the basin considering major physical, social, economic and political aspects. The Zayandeh-Rud river basin, in central Iran with a semi-arid climate and large agricultural, industrial and domestic water uses, is an example of a complicated watershed system where the lack of complete knowledge about all the interacting subsystems has led to failure of the policymakers in addressing the water shortage in the basin. Although water shortages occur fairly soon after completion of each new water source, transbasin water diversion is still the major policy of water planners to address ongoing shortages. System dynamics provides a unique framework for integrating the disparate physical, socio-economic and political systems important to watershed management. This approach is used to comprehend the interactions of different drivers of the problem and to convey the experiences, lessons learned, and perceptions gained during the model development process. A simulation model, built based on causal loop diagrams of the problem, shows that transbasin diversion is not the best and only solution to the problem. The results of the model for different scenarios suggest that various options of demand management and population control can be more effective in addressing the water crisis of the basin when combined with transbasin water diversions, increasing water storage capacity and controlling of groundwater withdrawal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss issues to be considered by water professionals for sustainability monitoring and assessment. They describe sustainable development as a quality issue and a process. They recommend developing processes and tools that help promote sustainability and practicing participatory planning and collaborative, trust-based decision-making based on a common sense of urgency.

The article offers information on importance of proactively addressing aging and problematic dams. Topics discussed include need a scientific and legal framework in place to evaluate if and when dam removal is required; role of Environmental impact assessment in dam rehabilitation and removal decisions; and need to address socio-economic, technological, and regulatory barriers to dam maintenance.