A fuzzy AHP-outranking framework for selecting measures of river basin management plans

The selection of development measures is not merely a financial issue, but crucial parameters, such as environmental protection and socioeconomic security ought to be taken into consideration. In this research, the measures proposed by the Programmes of Measures (PoMs) through the Water Framework Directive implementation process are evaluated with the use of integrated hybrid multicriteria methods. Multicriteria outranking methods are coupled with a 0/1 linear programming in which the cost of the measures is induced as a constraint. The monocriterion scores of the applied method, in which 6 criteria and 37 alternatives are integrated, are proposed for the prioritization of the supplementary PoMs. The case study area is the River Basin District of Central Macedonia, Greece. Fuzzy analytical hierarchy processes are used to determine the weights of the criteria as crisp numbers even if fuzzy pairwise comparisons among the importance of the criteria exist. The advantages of these choices are presented in the article, and the results of the research demonstrate the usefulness of the methodology when financial constraints do not permit the implementation of the whole set of measures.