Application of multi-agent decision-making methods in hydrological ecosystem services management.

In this paper, a methodology is presented for managing hydrological ecosystem services by taking into account the hierarchy of stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. With this in mind, a water allocation model is first used for allocating water resources to demands. Then, several ecosystem services (ESs)-based criteria are defined to evaluate hydrological ESs of water resources management policies. A set of water and environmental resources management strategies (alternatives) are defined for decision-makers, and several drought management strategies are determined to decrease the area of key crops and water demands of agricultural nodes. To model a multi-agent multi-criteria decision-making problem for managing hydrological ESs, three main steps are considered as follows:•Different ES-based criteria (i.e., economic profit, NPP, and ecological index) are defined, and their grade-based values are estimated.•Several strategies are defined for stakeholders at different levels.•A recursive evidential reasoning (ER) approach, which considers a hierarchical structure for decision-makers and a leader-follower game, is used to select the best strategy for each decision-maker.The applicability and efficiency of the methodology are illustrated by applying it to a real-world case study. The methodology is general and can be easily applied to other study areas.

A multi-agent decision-making framework for evaluating water and environmental resources management scenarios under climate change.

This paper introduces a hierarchical multi-agent decision-making framework for Water and Environmental Resources Management Scenarios (WERMSs) under uncertain conditions of climate change and complex agent characteristics. The proposed framework utilizes three Game Theory concepts: the Stackelberg, Bayesian (Incomplete), and Imperfect games, in order to incorporate the hierarchical structure of the agents and the temporal distribution and accuracy of information between them. The methodology is applied to the Zarrinehroud River Basin (ZRB), the largest hypersaline lake in the Middle East. The area of the lake has decreased dramatically (about 50 %) during past decades causing various environmental, social, and economic problems. WERMSs were evaluated using qualitative and quantitative hydrological, social, economic, and ecological criteria under different climate change scenarios. The proposed methodology provides equilibriums in the decision-making process while considering different climate change scenarios. Applying the selected WERM results in an accumulated value of 2995 million m3 of water flow to the lake until 2049. Moreover, the lake's elevation reaches a new level of 1272.6 m above sea level at the end of the following 30 years, compared to the elevation of 1271.3 at the beginning of the evaluation period.

Evaluating and improving the sustainability of ecosystem services in river basins under climate change.

This paper presents a new framework for evaluating the sustainability of basin-wide ecosystem services (ESs) including provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services. In this framework, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and MODSIM1 models and experts' opinions are used to evaluate the ESs. To show the applicability of the proposed framework, it is applied to the Zarrinehrud river basin under three different climate change (CC) scenarios (i.e., RCP 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) for two different time horizons (i.e., 2020-2049 and 2020-2098). This basin is the main water supplier of the largest hypersaline lake in the Middle East, Lake Urmia. In the next step, 128 water resources management (WRM) scenarios are taken into account considering the projects defined by Urmia Lake Restoration National Committee (ULRNC). All ecosystem services are evaluated considering all WRM and CC scenarios. Finally, a group COPRAS-based decision-making approach is used to determine the best WRM scenario under climate change. The results show that WRM scenario 128 is the best scenario for improving ecosystem services in the study area. This scenario includes some projects such as allocating water to the lake from new resources, rehabilitating irrigation and draining networks, and improving cropping patterns.

Managing basin-wide ecosystem services using the bankruptcy theory.

Bankrupt ecosystems are those that cannot appropriately provide all their ecosystem services. In this paper, a novel bankruptcy-based methodology is developed to manage ecosystem services. To test the applicability of the developed methodology, it is used in the Zarrinehrud river basin in Iran. First, an integrated framework is used to assess regulating, supporting, provisioning, and cultural ecosystem services of the study area under three climate change scenarios of Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5. Then, for each ecosystem service, an aggregated utility is calculated that takes into account the stakeholders' different opinions toward ecosystem services. The utilities of the ecosystem services show that the Zarrinehrud river basin is bankrupt. To manage this ecosystem, six bankruptcy methods of Adjusted Proportional, Constrained Equal Loss, Constrained Equal Award, Piniles, Talmud, and Hybrid are developed and used in the study area. In this study, the summation of ecosystem services' aggregated utilities under each management scenario is considered as an asset, and all mentioned bankruptcy methods are used to redistribute these assets to different ecosystem services. Considering aggregated utilities, redistributed utilities, and each ecosystem service's claim, two different Root Mean Square Error-based approaches are developed to find the most applicable management scenario in a bankruptcy condition. Using the mentioned approaches, management scenario 128, which is comprised of all management packages, is chosen as the best option under all climate change scenarios. This scenario includes projects such as improving cropping patterns, allocating water to the lake from new water resources, and rehabilitating irrigation and draining systems. Moreover, analyzing the results derived from different bankruptcy methods shows that the Talmud, Hybrid, and Constrained Equal Loss methods have the best performance.

Evaluating water resources management scenarios considering the hierarchical structure of decision-makers and ecosystem services-based criteria.

This paper introduces a new methodology for evaluating water resources management scenarios considering different aspects of their hydrological ecosystem services. The temporal variations of supplied water to different demands are assessed as provisioning hydrological ecosystem services. Then, three agricultural drought management policies have been defined for each water supply-demand alternative to reduce the irrigation water and cultivated area of the agricultural demand nodes during droughts. In addition to the net primary productivity criterion (NPP) and economic profit, the ecological condition of the system has been evaluated as an ecosystem services-based criterion. To prioritize and select the best water resources management (WRM) scenario(s), a game theory-based hierarchical evidential reasoning (ER) technique with multiple decision-makers has been used. The proposed methodology has been applied to the Urmia Lake basin, which is the largest saline lake in the Middle East. The grade-based values of the criteria have been used to compare the WRM scenarios. The results show that a scenario that includes supplying 100% of the lake's water demand has the highest priority. This scenario also suggests reducing the cultivated area of dominant crops and using deficit irrigation practices.