A Model for Attaining Guidelines to Select Optimal Safe Water Option(s) and to Specify their Locations

Abstract

In this chapter a multi-objective mixed-integer optimization model is built. The model constitutes a set of structural equations, which define constraints of the mixed-integer programming model. The policy mix, in order to supply safe water for the people living in the affected area, is heavily dependent on the optimal solution of the model. The optimization considers not only an optimum selection among the set of safe options but also the optimality of assignment of the selected safe option all over the village. The optimality is mostly dependent on multi-objects, namely the number of people who can get safe water on the specified standard, the total cost necessary for construction and maintenance, environmental friendliness of the selected safe options, total hours consumed by the people living in the village to get the safe water, geographical feasibility, ease in operation etc. In developing the model a Primitive Paretian Optimization approach was adopted, i.e., an approach in which one of the multi-objects is to be maximized (or minimized) keeping all the other multi-objects at various specific levels jointly with several structural equations of demand, supply, etc.