Environmental Risk Assessment of Dam Projects By Using ELECTRE Technique

Dam projects cause serious impacts on the surrounding environment. Therefore, in these sorts of projects, risk assessment of dams is one of the most important aspects of environmental risk management. The objective of present research is using one of the Multi Criteria Decision Making methods to make the managerial decisions for determining the most important identified risks and risks occurring prevention or reduction. Therefore, activities of construction and operation of Azad dam, which is located on Kumasi River in Kurdistan province, were investigated.
Firstly, environmental risks were identified using Delphi questionnaire method and based on their criteria including importance, severity, and probable occurrence. Then the aforementioned criteria of risks were weighted by using Entropy method. In the next stage, Elimination et Choice Translating to Reality (ELECTRE) method, one of the techniques of Multi Criteria Decision Making methods (MCDM), was used for ranking of probable risks.
Findings: The results show that the most important risks of Azad dam are respectively including reduction of soil quality with the grade of 9, Kumasi River water contamination with the grade of 7 and intense reduction of organic matter and nutrients in Kumasi River flow at down side of the dam with the grade of 4.
Discussion and In this paper, environmental risk assessment of dam by using ELECTRE method to make the correct decision, making process for risk assessor and choosing the best alternative of a finite set of alternatives described in terms of evaluative criteria. Therefore, that, function of each risk was determined by ranking and create opportunity to decision maker for correct risk management and choosing the proper method for risk control.