Assessment of water-energy planning using qualitative multiple criteria decision aiding in a village of Costa Brava

Abstract

Multi-criteria decision-making under uncertainty are accepted as suitable techniques in conflicting problems that cannot be represented by numerical values, in particular in water-energy planning. In this paper, a qualitative multi-criteria group decision-making with qualitative linguistic labels is proposed. This method addresses uncertainty with different levels of precision and ranks multi-criteria alternatives. Each decision maker's judgment on the performance of alternatives with respect to each criterion is expressed by qualitative linguistic labels. The new method takes into account qualitative and quantitative variables provided by the decision makers simultaneously. Decision maker judgments are incorporated into the proposed method to generate a complete ranking of alternatives. A real case study in a Costa Brava village (Catalonia, Spain) for improving the water problem in this touristic Mediterranean coastal area, has been performed. In this application, different water scenarios are ranked taking into account qualitative and quantitative levels of variables using simulation water-energy model and qualitative assessment.