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Multicriteria Decision Aid in Supporting Decisions Related to Groundwater Protection

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Abstract

In the recent decades, there have been frequent conflicts between groundwater resources and environmentally hazardous activities. An example is the construction of the new highway through the important glaciofluvial esker aquifer Nybroåsen, which passes the protection zone of the water supply for the Kalmar municipality, in the southeastern part of Sweden. The decision to build the new road through this important aquifer has been strongly questioned by the municipality and the public because the value of the water resources in Nybroåsen was not taken into consideration during the first phase of the decision-making process. Multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) is applied as a tool to structure and analyze the four road alternatives proposed in the environmental impact assessment for the above conflict. The alternatives, including the existing road, are in conflict with water resources, agriculture, natural, and cultural values. The impacts on the water resources have been predicted by a two-dimensional physically based time-variant flow and solute groundwater model, which has been calibrated and evaluated. The MCDA illustrates how it can be used to identify (1) actors and their concerns, (2) ranking of alternative road scenarios according to actors’ preferences, and (3) coalition groups of actors, i.e., groups that have similar views with regard to the road alternatives. The analysis shows that the two best compromise solutions obtained in the MCDA were unacceptable by the strongest coalition group, showing that either the family of criteria was not well chosen or new alternatives should have been developed.

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy, and the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. We thank Dr. Delilah Al-Khudhairy, Prof. Gert Knutsson, Prof. Roger Thunvik, and Sigbert Rickardsson at Kalmar municipal and Lars Kylefors at Vatten och Samhällsteknik Ltd, Kalmar, for contributions to the project study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint Research Centre, Commission of the European Communities, Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen, I-210 20 Ispra (VA), Italy

    Åse Eliasson & Francesco Mazzeo Rinaldi

  2. Department of Earth Sciences/Geophysics, Uppsala University, Villavägen 16, SE-752 36 Uppsala, Sweden

    Niklas Linde

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  1. Åse Eliasson
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  2. Francesco Mazzeo Rinaldi
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  3. Niklas Linde
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Correspondence to Åse Eliasson.

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Eliasson, Å., Rinaldi, F. & Linde, N. Multicriteria Decision Aid in Supporting Decisions Related to Groundwater Protection . Environmental Management 32, 589–601 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-003-2906-9

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