Water Scarcity Management in Arid Regions Based on an Extended Multiple Criteria Technique

Relying on strategic multi-criteria techniques is an effective step for identifying the sources of water management problems, formulating strategies, and prioritizing the alternatives. In this study, a hybrid use of recently developed “Best Worst Method” (BWM) and strength-weakness-opportunity-threat (SWOT) matrix was presented as a novel strategic multiple criteria strategic technique called B’WOT. B’WOT simplifies decision-making by handling rank-reversal in pairwise comparisons. The methodology employed in this paper involves: (1) finding the effective strategic factors of the region with SWOT; (2) evaluating the relative significance of strategic factors through a comparative framework including B’WOT along with a conventional Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-SWOT called A’WOT; (3) prioritizing the strategies with a risk-based multiple criteria technique, and (4) aggregation of divergent ranks of the strategies under different risk-attitudes. Comparison of the BWM vs. AHP in ranking SWOT factors according to consistency ratio (CR) and total deviation (TD) showed the superiority of BWM. Unlike AHP that some of its pairwise comparison matrices violated the acceptable CR’s threshold, all the BWM’s matrices provided consistent outcomes. Moreover, TD values of BWM’s matrices were lower (better) than AHP ones. Employment of a risk-based technique was another merit of the study that provided a wide variety of prioritization lists with respect to pessimistic, neutral, and optimistic scenarios. Based on the aggregated results, “providing alternatives for low efficient and environmentally destructive agriculture by facilitating participation of private sector in industry and tourism sectors” was selected as the first priority to alleviate water scarcity in the Yazd province, Iran. In general, all the high-ranked strategies are -directly or indirectly- contributed to the seriously inefficient agricultural activities within the province.