Mathematical and Computational Applications, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 669-679, 2011. © Association for Scientific Research USE OF DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS AS A MULTI CRITERIA DECISION TOOL – A CASE OF IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT Barış Yılmaz 1* and Mehmet Ali Yurdusev 2 1 Gölmarmara Vocational School, Celal Bayar University, Manisa, Turkey 2 Department of Civil Engineering, Celal Bayar University, Manisa, Turkey * baris.yilmaz@bayar.edu.tr Abstract- In this paper, the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as a tool for Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is investigated for assessing various irrigation management strategies in terms of economic, environmental and social criteria. To carry out this task, an irrigation management research project report is used for the comparison of various MCDM and DEA rankings as well as providing the required data. The DEA methods called Charnes-Cooper-Rhodes (CCR), Banker- Charnes-Cooper (BCC) and Reduced-CCR (RCCR) are employed by the integration of criteria weights through the addition of assurance regions to improve discriminating power of the analysis, and to reach the ranking of strategies. The results indicate that DEA constitutes a valuable approach to be used alternatively or in addition to MCDM, and incorporating managerial preferences into the DEA methods provide correlated results with MCDM techniques. Keywords-Data Envelopment Analysis, MCDM, Irrigation Management 1. INTRODUCTION As the fresh water resources are declining in quantity and deteriorating in quality, water resources management is of greater importance than ever before and it is agreed by all that integrated management is the way forward. Integrated water resources management is the concept of managing water sectors subject to various objectives in an integrated manner while considering social, economic, environmental and technical dimensions. On the other hand, all water related objectives cannot be easily traded off with each other due to their complicated and often conflicting nature. This multiplicity overburdens decision makers (DMs) in finding the “most satisfactory decision”. Therefore, MCDM methodologies have been gaining more attention in water resources management. DEA is a linear programming methodology to measure the relative efficiencies of a homogenous set of Decision Making Units (DMUs) when the production process presents a structure of multiple inputs and outputs. Despite large number of MCDM methodologies available [1], the application of DEA as a discrete alternative MCDM tool is also an admissible way to achieve reasonable decisions. Some specific examples of DEA including the efficiency studies of the water companies in UK [2], the irrigation districts in Buyuk Menderes Basin [3], dam locations [4] and the reservoir system in Paraguacu River Basin [5] can be cited in recent literature. In this study, the evaluation of DEA as a MCDM tool is investigated through calculating efficiency scores of the alternatives dealing with irrigation management strategies. The data used is taken from the report of Euro-Mediterranean Forum of Economic Institutes