Multicriterion decision making in irrigation planning

Selection of the best compromise irrigation plan is examined in the multi objective context. The study deals with three con ̄icting objectives: net bene®ts, agricultural production and labour employment. Three-stage procedure is adopted combining multi objective optimisation, cluster analysis and multicriterion decision-making (MCDM) methods. Two MCDM methods, namely, PROMETHEE-2 and a newly developed method EXPROM-2, are employed in the evaluation. Spearman rank correlation test is used to assess the correlation between the ranks. The above methodology is applied to a case study of Sri Ram Sagar Project, Andhra Pradesh, India. Sensitivity analysis studies indicated that ranking pattern is quite robust to parameter changes as far as the ®rst two positions are concerned. It is found that net bene®ts, agricultural production and labour employment per hectare on average for the culturable command area are 8980 rupees ($225), 3.73 tonnes and 242 man-days, respectively, in the best compromise plan. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.