Development of transferable multicriteria decision tools for water resource management

The European Water Framework Directive establishes a framework for protecting water resources and prescribes a set of environmental objectives which are to be achieved by 2015. The Directive’s implementation will entail decisions which will have to consider multiple, uncertain decision outcomes, and which involve or affect a variety of stakeholders. A raft of methods such as cost benefit analysis, cost effectiveness analysis and multicriteria decision analysis has already been developed to help decision-makers deal with complex decision problems. However, using different methods often leads to different recommendations regarding which of the alternative options to take. The Marie Curie project presented here analyses the success of decision support techniques and tools applied to water resource management. The project’s aim is to establish a decision framework helping the most suitable decision support method to be chosen by selecting the programme of measures which can best achieve the Directive’s environmental objectives.