Socioeconomic module for decision support for water resource management in South Africa.

摘要

Management of water resources in a water-stressed river basin involves a complex decision making process that needs to address a range of interests and objectives. Not all such objectives are in mutual concordance. Different water management alternatives that can be adopted have varying effects on various objectives. Choosing the best alternative for the largest benefits of many stakeholders necessitates use of a decision support system that can not only help the stakeholders comparatively estimate the tradeoffs, but also facilitate negotiation among themselves to agree on the best acceptable alternative.; An assessment of previous and ongoing efforts to develop such decision support systems shows that attempts to address the socioeconomic effects have been insufficient. Despite an increased understanding about the connectedness between water resources management and socioeconomic development objectives, the existing conceptual frameworks and methodologies of decision analyses in the field of water resources engineering and management largely exhibit such a gap.; With the view to contribute towards filling this gap, this research applies a methodology in case of Olifants river basin in South Africa to: (a) establish a link between water management indicators and the socioeconomic objectives; (b) assess the implications of various water management alternatives; and (c) develop a socioeconomic module based on multi-criteria decision analysis techniques that allows for rank ordering the alternatives against those objectives.; The results obtained from the socioeconomic module show that the module, besides rank ordering, also provide valuable insights related to tradeoffs, sensitivity, uncertainty, etc, enabling the stakeholders to take better informed decisions and to negotiate more transparently on alternatives that are in sharp conflict, competitive, or to explore win-win alternatives.