Multicriterion Selection of Wastewater Management Alternatives

Abstract

Multicriterion decision‐making (MCDM) techniques are used to analyze a multiobjective wastewater management problem in order to select an appropriate management scheme. A specific case study consisting of 15 alternative management schemes is evaluated with respect to 12 noncommensurable, discrete criteria, using three different MCDM techniques; compromise programming (CP), cooperative game theory (CGT), and ELECTRE I. The case study is the Nogales International Wastewater Management Project, which treats wastewater coming from the twin cities of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The problem is formulated in a multicriterion context in terms of objectives, specifications, criteria, criterion scales, and construction of an evaluation matrix that consists of the alternative versus criteria array. Analyses of the matrix using the MCDM techniques result in selecting the most satisfying alternative in the case of CP and CGT and narrowing the choice to a few non‐dominated alternatives (here, two) in the case of ELECTRE I.