Effective watershed management; Case study of Urmia Lake, Iran

Limited water resources with uneven distribution and growing demands are the main challenges of water management in Iran. The government has planned several water resources development projects. The complex technical, socio-economical and environmental outcomes of these projects require a comprehensive evaluation. To select more adaptive and accountable projects, suitable group decision support systems are needed. In this research, 4 proposed routes of water transfer schemes to Urmia Lake in Iran, which is in danger of completely drying out, are evaluated with respect to different criteria. The criteria and weights were obtained from an organization responsible for major water infrastructures in the basin. By using an efficient multi-criteria decision making method of compromise programming, the 4 alternatives were ranked, and the most robust water transfer route was selected. This best alternative transfers about 300 million cubic meters per year from another basin in the north of the lake. Results show the importance of using decision support systems for participatory and effective lake management.