GIS and Multi-Criteria Evaluation for Integrated Water Resources

Amgad ELMAHDI, CSIRO LAND AND WATER
Khaled Kheireldin, ASCE Member, Associated Professor, National Water Research Center

Abstract

Abstract Integrated Water Resources planning and Management is considered a very complex issue. It is usually solved through the multi-sectoral, Interdisciplinary and hierarchal decomposition approaches. In general, integrated management indicates the consideration of water, social, socio-economic, economic and environmental issues. The current study aims at merging the GIS and Multi-Criteria evaluation (MCE) approaches and solves the integrated management of a cultivation area. Thus, an area of about 120.000 thousand acres (250.000 Feddan) has been selected to be simulated through the merging of GIS and MCE for the scale of integrated management. The selected area is located at Northern Nile River Delta area with a coastal zone on the Mediterranean. The GIS has been applied to picture the area with its different sectors that are: social, economic, environment and water. Different randomization cropping pattern distribution scenarios have been proposed. Through the merging of GIS and MCE three scenarios have been run and evaluated on three different levels: farmer, canal catchments area and integrated area. It has been found that this merging is result in a very powerful and robust tool for evaluation of different proposed plans on the integrated levels. The merging of GIS and MCE is really facilitated the decision making process for such type of problems. It is recommended to use such methodology in the integrated management of similar problems.