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Developing Strategies for Agricultural Water Management of Large Irrigation and Drainage Networks with Fuzzy MCDM

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Abstract

Sustainable water resources management aims at increasing the efficient use of water and achieving food security. This work proposes a generalized novel spatial fuzzy strategic planning (SFSP) in combination with multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) and a conceptual agricultural water use model for determining sustainable agricultural water management strategies. The proposed framework is applied to an irrigation and drainage network in Iran, which constitutes a large-scale water resource system. A spatial strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis of internal and external factors related to agricultural water management is applied in this work. Possible water management strategies were ranked with the MCDM approach that combines the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Fuzzy technique for order-preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The AHP estimates the criteria weights and the TOPSIS model prioritizes the agricultural water management strategies. The results of SWOT analysis show that the final scores of the internal and external factors are equal to 2.9 and 2.73, respectively. Accordingly, the most attractive strategic type is a SO (aggressive) strategy, and a combination of structural and non-structural strategies (SO, ST, and WO strategies) are the top-ranked ones. Proposed strategies for water supply and demand management are the development and rehabilitation of the physical structure of water resources system of irrigation network, improvement of operation management and maintenance of water resources system, wastewater management, and inter-basin water transfer within the irrigation network. The results indicate that the total annual volume of agricultural water under normal conditions is about 1.8 billion cubic meters, of which about 1707 million cubic meters (95%) issue from surface water sources and 90 million cubic meters (5%) from groundwater sources. The proposed model and the calculated results provide viable and effective solutions for the implementation of sustainable management of water resources and consumption in large-scale water resources systems.

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Availability of Data and Materials

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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The codes that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Iran’s National Science Foundation (INSF) for its support for this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Irrigation and Reclamation Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, 3158777871, Tehran, Iran

    Ahmad Radmehr & Omid Bozorg-Haddad

  2. Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Hugo A. Loáiciga

Authors
  1. Ahmad Radmehr
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  2. Omid Bozorg-Haddad
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  3. Hugo A. Loáiciga
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Contributions

Ahmad Radmehr; Software, Formal analysis, Writing–Original Draft. Omid Bozorg-Haddad; Conceptualization, Supervision, Project administration. Hugo A. Loáiciga; Validation, Writing–Review & Editing.

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Correspondence to Omid Bozorg-Haddad.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 Agricultural water use in the irrigation management zones of the Sefidroud irrigation network (normal condition)
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Table 6 Agricultural water use in the irrigation management zones of the Sefidroud irrigation network (dry condition)
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Table 7 Internal SWOT factors and weighted ratings of factors (S = Strength; W = Weakness)
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Table 8 External SWOT factors and weighted ratings of factors (O = Opportunity; T = Threat)
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Table 9 Agricultural water management strategies by SWOT analysis
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Radmehr, A., Bozorg-Haddad, O. & Loáiciga, H.A. Developing Strategies for Agricultural Water Management of Large Irrigation and Drainage Networks with Fuzzy MCDM. Water Resour Manage 36, 4885–4912 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-022-03192-3

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