Irrigation
E. Rezaei; M. Montaseri; H. Rezaei
Abstract
Introduction: Prioritization of optimal water allocation of surface flow storage dams for different applications (drinking, agriculture, industry, environment, etc.) in arid and semi-arid regions such as Iran due to the range of changes, high flow uncertainty Reservoir inlets, and the occurrence of intermittent ...
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Introduction: Prioritization of optimal water allocation of surface flow storage dams for different applications (drinking, agriculture, industry, environment, etc.) in arid and semi-arid regions such as Iran due to the range of changes, high flow uncertainty Reservoir inlets, and the occurrence of intermittent droughts are of great importance. For this purpose, the Fuzzy Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is proposed and used as a suitable formulation method in prioritizing water allocation in the water resources system. Therefore, in this study, prioritization of water allocation for different purposes of Shahrchai reservoir dam located upstream of Urmia metropolis has been done in a field study using fuzzy hierarchical method.Materials and Methods: A fuzzy hierarchical process based on quantitative and qualitative effective factors has been developed. In the first stage, the problem structure was designed by determining the priority of water allocation of users, criteria, sub-criteria, and other factors. Then the decision-making hierarchy based on the problem structure (purpose, criteria, sub-criteria, factors, and options in the first to fifth levels, respectively) was defined. In the mentioned prioritization structure, the goal was determined at the first level, ie the optimal or appropriate allocation of Shahrchay reservoir dam water for different operators, and at the second level, three economic, social and environmental criteria were considered as the main criteria. At the third level, " cultivation area and gross income" and "employment and population" were considered as sub-criteria of two economic and social criteria, respectively. The main beneficiaries, namely agriculture, urban drinking, recreation and tourism, industry, environmental needs of Lake Urmia and groundwater fourth level (options) have formed the problem structure. At the next step, based on the field data or questionnaires, criteria, sub-criteria, and factors were compared in pairs using the proposed linguistic and fuzzy comparisons, and the priority of water consumption over each criterion or sub-criterion or factor were compared based on fuzzy triangular numbers. The weights were determined and ranked each using the Chang development method. At the third stage of the final ranking, the priority of water allocation was determined based on the final weight of criteria or priorities at the previous stage and the superior option was determined. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the weight change of the criteria and the decision-making process of the problem has been performed.Results and Discussion: A decision model based on a fuzzy approach is presented to rank the different options using Shahrchay dam water. For this purpose, firstly, using the opinions of experts and researchers, the results of a questionnaire, criteria and sub-criteria and important options in allocating water to Shahrchai Dam were determined. Secondly, using Chang's development analysis, different options were evaluated based on the mentioned criteria, sub-criteria, and factors. From a scientific point of view, because the questionnaires were presented to experts, the economic criterion is a high priority, so it is possible to attach great importance to the general conclusion about the criteria in economic attitudes and related issues. In addition, the allocation of water to the urban drinking sector with a weight of 0.33 was as the top priority, agriculture, Lake Urmia, industry, groundwater, and recreation were in the next priorities, respectively. Therefore, economic criteria and drinking water supply were recognized as the main objectives of planning and managing water resources in the metropolis of Urmia. The drinking sector is a vital factor for the survival of a community and because the drinking water of Urmia city is supplied through Shahrchai dam, so the allocation of water to this sector should be considered as the top priority. The agricultural sector was also given the second priority with less importance. The supply of water to this sector has a significant direct effect on the economy of the agricultural sector and indirectly on the entire economy of the region, which indicates the importance of the agricultural sector in the economy, living conditions of the region and the allocation of water to this sector. Comparing agricultural and industrial activities in Shahrchai catchment area, the most activity in the region is agriculture and industry is in a lower priority, which is also shown by the hierarchical results. Since Shahrchai River is one of the suppliers of water to Lake Urmia, the allocation of water to this section improves the condition of the lake and, consequently, it improves the environmental, economic, and social conditions of the region. The results also indicate the importance of Lake Urmia in relation to industry and its higher status indicates the attention of officials to the drying crisis of the Lake Urmia.
A. Emadi; Ramin Fazloula
Abstract
Introduction: Population growth and water resource constraints make optimal operation of available resources important. Considering the utility of the stakeholders and the physical limitations of the problem, the optimal allocation of water resources is, therefore, necessary. Among the proposed strategies, ...
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Introduction: Population growth and water resource constraints make optimal operation of available resources important. Considering the utility of the stakeholders and the physical limitations of the problem, the optimal allocation of water resources is, therefore, necessary. Among the proposed strategies, the game theory is one of the methods used to improve water resources management. Also, in order to achieve the optimal and fair allocation, a model and method should be selected in accordance to the conditions. Our main purpose was to study the optimal water allocation from the dam reservoir by increasing the overall profitability of the system through forming a coalition as well as increasing the profits of each water users participated in the coalition. Increase in profits will be possible without the need for any additional costs and only with the change in the operation management. Integration of Genetic Algorithm optimization model with Shapley Crisp game theory can be considered as the innovation of this research work applied to optimally allocate water from Shahid Rajaee Dam reservoir to downstream needs.
Materials and Methods: In this study, a new methodology based on crisp Shapley games is developed for optimal water allocation from the dam reservoir. First, the standard operation policy was used to determine the volume of available water. Then, the optimization model of the Genetic Algorithm was employed for initial allocation considering an equity criterion. The Crisp Cooperative Game Theory was then applied for secondary optimization of water allocation among stakeholders. The possible coalitions for increasing the overall system profits were formed using the Shapley method and the profits of each coalition were then calculated. Finally, the Shapley's value relationship was used to reassign profits to players in order to encourage them to participate in the grand coalition. This study was carried out on Shahid Rajaee dam located in 45 kilometers southwest of Sari in Tajan basin. This dam mainly supplies agricultural and drinking water. Rice and citrus production were the largest and second largest water consumer, respectively.
Results and Discussion: In this study, the monthly amount of water released from Shahid Rajaee Dam reservoir was determined by using standard utilization policy and then the amount of initial allocation to downstream dam needs was calculated using genetic algorithm optimization model. Then, by using the players' profit coefficient and the amounts allocated from the implementation of the genetic algorithm model, the initial profit values were calculated for each stakeholder. Employing the Shapley Crisp method, the amounts of water allocated to each player and their corresponding economic benefits were obtained for the grand and two-player coalition. The results showed that the grand coalition had more benefits than the binary coalitions as well as the initial allocation. At this step, the Shapley value relationship was used to reallocate the profits among the players. After allocating water to three participants based on different coalitions, since the fair share of each was obtained in the first step, payments must be made between the players in order to be fair. The player who receives more water share determined at the first step must pay money to other players receiving water less than their fair share. The method proposed for the 18 years statistical period was used to allocate water among the stakeholder. According to the findings, the formation of a grand coalition increases overall system profit without the need for any additional costs and only with revising the operation management.
Conclusion: In this research, an integrated model of optimization was developed using Genetic Algorithm and Shapley Crisp Cooperative Game Approach. The amount of financial payments among the stakeholders in the coalition was also determined based on the Shapely value. Constituent coalitions show the management impacts on water policy and demand management in the studied area. The best results were obtained when players formed a grand coalition. In other words, by participating in the grand coalition and reallocation of water and profits among players, the overall system profits will increase by 10 % and the profits of players cultivating rice, citrus and other agricultural products will rise by 6, 16 and 15 %, respectively, as compared with the condition the players do not participate in the grand coalition and water allocation is only done using the Genetic Algorithm. Therefore, the water allocation should be based on a grand coalition requiring the cooperation and participation of all stakeholders. The results indicate that this method can be applied to allocate resources equitably. It can be also used to solve social conflicts among decision-makers.
Omid Nasiri-Gheidari; Safar Marofi
Abstract
Introduction: Due to the rapid rate of population growth, water resource topics wasmainly affected by the economic and social components, however, the importance of environmental issues in such projects has gained more attention. As pollution loads are increasing, it has become more essential to incorporate ...
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Introduction: Due to the rapid rate of population growth, water resource topics wasmainly affected by the economic and social components, however, the importance of environmental issues in such projects has gained more attention. As pollution loads are increasing, it has become more essential to incorporate water quality in water resource management issues. Under this condition, optimal water allocation by considering multiple objectives of water quality and quantity issues can lead to sustainable and optimal benefit of stakeholders. This study was done in order to balance environmental and economic concerns in water resource allocation.
Materials and Methods: Based on game theory concepts and fuzzy programming procedure, two new methodologies were developed for sustainable water resource allocation in river systems. The proposed methods which include a multi-objective bargaining and fuzzy programming approaches were utilized to analysis strategies of interaction between environmental protection and economical income. Two groups of players, consists of player 1 for environmental and player 2 for economic issues were considered in order to apply the developed models. As players will not be satisfied with the outcome of each other, they will begin the bargaining process. Throughout the bargaining rounds, players will reduce their expectations. After several negotiations, the interval between the reset goal values and outcomes will be decreased. The bargaining process will be finished if final solutions reach to the determined goals. In the study, the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) were considered as water quality indicators of environmental objective function, since salinity is the important problem of the study area. Using crop production function in economic income objective function makes it possible to incorporate deficit irrigation in different crop growth stages. Since allocation problems include many decision variables, conventional (non-linear) crop production function will have high computational costs and linear form of it can reduce the complexity of the optimization model. Therefore,additive (linear) form of crop production function was taken into consideration instead of multiplicative form. Total pollution load discharged into the river (ton per year) and economical income of the system (thousand dollars per year) wasconsidered as environmental and economic values, respectively. During the fuzzy programming procedure, the purpose is to achieve a compromise solution. In this approach, the individual maximum and minimum values of objectives is used to define the membership function. This procedure will maximize the satisfaction degree of the constructed membership functions of the objectives. The presented methodology was illustrated in a part of Karoon-Dez river system between Gotvand dam, Dez dam and Ahvaz city, as a case study. The area of Karoon-Dez river basin is about 67000 square kilometers and it is located in the southwestern part of Iran. The selected area includes 8 agro-industrial and 3 traditional agricultural sub-sectors.
Results and Discussion: Using a linear form of crop production function for calculating the total benefit of the system leads to significant reduction in run-time of the optimization model and make irrigation programming possible by regarding crop growth stages and the available water amount. The results of this study showed that Nash equilibrium, which provides a base for decision makers to choose a strategy, was reached at the fourth round of bargaining process. Moreover, balance between economic and environmental objectives is available by reducing economical expectation and environmental concerns from 553636 to 496216 thousand dollars per year and from 68264 to 87251 tons per year, respectively. In these cases, the annual allocated water to environmental and economical player will be 6123 MCM (5318 to agro-industrial sub-sectors and 805 to agricultural sub-sectors) and 6453 MCM (5730 to agro-industrial sub-sectors and 723 to agricultural sub-sectors) respectively. The results of the fuzzy programming approach demonstrated that at optimal condition, environmental and economic objective function was 85999 tons per year 500422 thousand dollars per year, respectively and allocated water to water users are 6354 MCM per year (agricultural and agro-industrial sub-sectors of the system will be (763 and 5591 MCM per year). Agro-Industrial sub-sector 3 will take the maximum allocated annual water (1789 MCM per year) and Agro-Industrial sub-sector 5 will receive the minimum annual allocated water (151 MCM per year). Comparison of two investigated approaches showed that their results are in agreement with each other.
Conclusions: Results of applying the developed methodology to the Karoon-Dez river system demonstrated that it is effective and applicable to determine sustainable water allocation policies. Finding of this study reveals that the proposed framework can facilitate decision-making process and optimize allocated water to different water users under conflicting objectives. Therefore, the developed procedure can be used as a managerial tool for optimal water allocation strategies, which is in accordance with sustainable development approach. It is easy to apply the presented methodology to other river systems with high pollution loads of agricultural return flows.
Parvaneh KazemiMeresht; Shahab Araghinejad
Abstract
Introduction: In spite of improving the water productivity due to development in water infrastructure systems, population increasing causing the water withdrawal is triple in the last fifty years. In this situation competition on water consumption especially in the agricultural sector which is the biggest ...
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Introduction: In spite of improving the water productivity due to development in water infrastructure systems, population increasing causing the water withdrawal is triple in the last fifty years. In this situation competition on water consumption especially in the agricultural sector which is the biggest consumer in the world and also in Iran is a severe problem. Water allocation has been assessed widely in the recent past. Additionally, several studies have explored methods to incorporate conflict resolution methods in water allocation. In a general classification, there are two types of methods. One is the method based on game theory, graph theory and general models based oncooperative game into a category that has the ability to consider the stakeholder preferences and assess the several scenarios under specified policy. Although this type of methods iseligible to cooperate the stakeholder in modeling but due to their weakness on considering the information on details and their limitations in adoption with changes caused from uncertainty, they are not popular in practical cases. Another type of conflict resolution method which is eligible to considering more detailed information of systems has the optimization approach basically, has the most interests between researchers. There is namely the Nash bargaining solution, the Kalai-Smorodinesky solution, the Equal loss solution and the area monotonic solution. There are several studies which areapplied these methods to investigate about groundwater (5, 6 and10). There are a few applications of water resource allocation models which is incorporated with conflict resolution methods in Transboundary Rivers nowadays and restricted to game theory related methods (1 and 2). The aim of this study is the assessment of the application of conflict resolution methods such as symmetric and non symmetric Nash solution, non symmetricKalai-Smorodinesky, non symmetric equal loss solution and finally the area monotonic solution in water allocation between beneficiary's provinces in Atrak basin. The performances of these methods are compared with each other and also with the common water allocation model.
Materials and Methods: In the last decades, Atrak river basin located at the eastern north of Iran, shared between three provinces; Razavi Khorasan, northern Khorasan and Golestan, has a tense conflict between upstream and downstream beneficiaries. It is predictable that this conflict will be more tense in the near future due to development of upstream and increasing the water withdrawal. Because of the venial role of the Razavi Khorasan province in the Atrak basin, this province is considered as a coalition with northern Khorasan. Related data for 41 years time series and other information were gathered. Due to Hydrology studies, wet and dry periods in the two regions have not differences. As a fact that the main problem of water allocation belongs to the agricultural sector and it is the biggest consumer in the region, supply of the municipal, industrial and environmental requirement is assumed.To begin, a linear programming model is developed to optimize the agricultural water resource allocation using the LINGO® which is a comprehensive tool designed to make building and solving Linear, Nonlinear (convex &nonconvex/Global), Quadratic, Quadratically Constrained, Second Order Cone, Stochastic, and Integer optimization models faster, easier and more efficient. In the second place, conflict resolution methods such as symmetric Nash, non symmetric Nash, Kalai-Smorodinsky, equal loss, uniform area solutions are applied as an object function of water allocation models one by one. In all of these methods the stakeholder preferences should be defined with their weights in the object function. Moreover, the mentioned models are assessed with performance criteria such as reliability in time and in volume and also the resiliency.
Results and Discussion: Comparison of the results of 4 water allocation models using conflict resolution methods besides the common water allocation model using LP is shown in the figure 3 which shows the differences between models in mean of Agricultural water deficit in both provinces separately.
Figure 3- Mean of long term of agricultural deficit in different models
As mentioned before water allocation models are evaluated with performance criteria and the result is revealed in the table3.
Table 3- Comparison of conflict resolution models using the performance criteria
Reliability in time
(%) Reliability in volume
(%) Resiliency
(%)
Golestan Khorasan Total Golestan Khorasan Total Golestan Khorasan Total
LP 100 20 26 100 31 55 100 18 23
Nash 41 34 36 57 54 55 38 33 42
Kalai 32 37 29 50 54 53 25 38 31
Loss 12 39 34 41 57 52 11 40 37
Area 59 12 8 64 17 34 41 14 9
It is clear that models which have the Nash, Kalai-Smorodinesky, Equal Loss, Area Monotonic solution as the object function produce an equitable allocation between two stakeholders in comparing with the LP.
Conclusion: Without better management in agricultural water in the future which is treated by increasing population and changing the climate, growing conflicts between stakeholders are expected. In this study application of conflict resolution methods in water allocation models in Atrak basin is considered. Comparison of models in terms of their performance to allocate water equitably between two beneficiary provinces is appraised. Results revealed that the conflict resolution methods have the same action in water allocation in general though; the Nash has desirable results than others. All the conflict resolution models have the better performance in general in comparison with the common water allocation model using the linear programming. To conclude, the dependencies of results to provinces weights are appraised. Application of conflict resolution methods are proposed instead of common water allocation models without stakeholder's preference consideration due to water allocation between several stakeholders equitably.
