Prioritizing the counties of Sistan and Baluchestan province in order to optimize the management of drought budget

One of the main problems in the management of drought is the allocation of funds to help the victims of this climatic phenomenon, which sometimes seems to lack any defined and certain mechanism. In addition, it is sometimes observed that the budget allocation has been based on political and regional interests, and the main victims of the drought have been deprived of these aids. Thus, the aim of this study was to design an intelligent metaheuristic algorithm for management of drought budget in Sistan and Baluchistan province. In this study, a number of indicators, such as population, enjoying the urban and rural drinking water. Vulnerability of water resources, area under cultivation, number of beneficiaries of the agricultural sector, annual consumption of agricultural water and atmospheric precipitation were used. The numerical values ​​for each of these indicators were collected for each city. However, given that these indicators are not equally important in every city and some of them may be more important in a city and less important in another, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique by using paired comparison method was employed to determine the relative importance of these criteria. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) was also used to identify different classes of drought. After determining the numerical values of ​​drought in the province, the ant colony algorithm was used to prioritize the cities in the province for optimal and better management of the province drought funds. The results of this algorithm were presented in the form of prioritizing maps of the province drought budget management. According to the selected criteria and suggested methodology, it seems that the combination of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique and ant colony algorithm is able to develop an intelligent system to set the priorities of cities in the province of Sistan and Baluchistan at the time of droughts for optimal allocation of funds to reduce the devastating effects of drought events. Based on the prioritizing maps of drought optimal budget allocation between the cities of Sistan and Baluchestan Province, it can be easily seen that the results show almost a good coordination with the existing realities.