Two Stage Multi Attributes Decision Making to Evaluate the Sustainability of Lake Urmia Restoration Alternatives

Owing to the oncoming needs and increasing the population of Lake Urmia Watershed، providing equilibrium between water supply and demand seems quite challenging and the Lake cannot be successful in meeting its ecological demands in this critical condition. In this unfavorable situation، water resources must be managed through a sustainable context. With this knowledge in hand، a multi attributes framework was applied to investigate the preference of supply or conservation alternatives. Preference of sustainable development attributes was calculated in a pairwise hierarchical structure and instead of time-consuming conventional procedure، Absolute Measurement was used that compares qualitative scales instead of alternatives and can overcome the problem of rank reversal in pairwise comparison. Ranks of the Alternatives were evaluated by VIKOR method which can provide a set of compromise solutions instead of one solution. Due to sensitivity analysis performance، VIKOR was introduced as a robust model in ranking the water resources alternatives. With regards to the results of this two-stage hierarchical-compromising approach، dealing with Watershed crisis is depended on organized indigenous collaboration، water use optimization and protecting available natural resources. On the other hand، supplying water by structural development without sustainability consideration would not be effective.