Decision Rules for Water Resources Management under Uncertainty

Abstract

Decision making under uncertainty is common in design and planning of water resource projects. The implications and effects of uncertainty on the ranking of design alternatives have been investigated in the literature. However, various decision rules are used to rank candidate alternatives under uncertainty, which creates difficulty in choosing the best rule in practice. This paper starts with a description of uncertainty sources in the decision making process, followed by an overview of various decision rules. A water resources management example is then used to evaluate the utility of different decision rules in terms of the ability of explicit quantification of weight uncertainty, nature of rules, complexity, and computational efficiency. This review provides a comprehensive summary of various decision rules for alternative ranking under uncertainty and guides on how to choose an appropriate decision rule that fits the decision makers’ purpose and use.