Integrated application of cluster and multicriterion analysis for ranking water resources planning strategies: a case study in Spain K. Srinivasa Raju and Lucien Duckstein K. Srinivasa Raju (corresponding author) Department of Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani 333 031, Rajasthan, India E-mail: ksraju@bits-pilani.ac.in Lucien Duckstein GRESE, Ecole Nationale Du Genie Rural, Des Eaux Et Des Forets, 19 Avenue Du Maine 75732 Paris Cedex 15, France E-mail: Duckstein@Engref.fr ABSTRACT Integrated application of cluster analysis and Multicriterion Decision-Making (MCDM) is employed for the case study of the Flumen Monegros irrigation area in the Huesca province of Spain. Economic, environmental and social criteria are used to rank alternative strategies. Alternative strategies are formulated by mixing factors such as irrigation systems, water pricing, water allocation, crop distribution, fertiliser use and subsidies received. Cluster analysis is employed to reduce the large size payoff matrix to a manageable subset for further use of the MCDM technique. ELECTRE-3, an MCDM technique of outranking nature, is employed to rank the alternative strategies. The Kendall rank correlation coefficient is employed here to analyse the correlation between the ranking patterns obtained from various scenarios. Results indicate that three representative strategies are to be preferred based on this analysis. Key words | cluster analysis, ELECTRE-3, multicriterion decision making, Spain, water resources planning INTRODUCTION The need for efficient integrated water management which would take into account all aspects of water, including quality, quantity, socio-economic activities, protection of the environment and alleviation of the adverse impacts of floods and droughts is keenly felt. This is essential to manage water resources in a more sustainable way in view of the ever-growing demands and dwindling supplies (Loucks et al. 1981). Vadas (1999) classified the following aspects to be affecting water resources planning: (1) poorly quantified environmental impacts, (2) stakeholder involvement, (3) economic development, (4) lack of a holistic management approach, (5) land degradation, (6) hydrology, (7) urbanisation and industrialisation and (8) water quality. Tuan & Thanh (1999) discussed some typical measures such as improving the knowledge of the concerned people about water conservation, environ- mental protection and the development of a strategy to redistribute water resources to increase efficiency. In the present study an effort is made to establish a framework to evolve a sustainable water policy and select realistic plans based on the available knowledge of economic, environ- mental and sociological aspects for implementation in a multicriterion context (Szidarovszky et al. 1986; Pomerol & Romero 2000) for the case study of Spain. The present study is an improvement over previous works of the authors (see Raju et al. 2000) incorporating newer methodologies such as (1) the introduction of cluster analysis to partition the set of generated alternative strategies into groups of similar characteristics, (2) the application of ELECTRE-3, a Multicriterion Decision- Making (MCDM) technique for outranking nature with a detailed description and extensive sensitivity analysis and (3) the utilisation of the Kendall rank correlation coefficient to analyse the correlation between the ranking patterns. The study is divided into a description of the case study and problem formulation, actual operation 295 © IWA Publishing 2004 Journal of Hydroinformatics | 06.4 | 2004 Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/jh/article-pdf/6/4/295/392678/295.pdf by guest on 06 June 2020