GIS And Multi-Criteria Evaluation: Robust Tools for Integrated Water Resources Management

Amgad ELMAHDI, CSIRO LAND AND WATER
Khaled Kheireldin, ASCE Member, Associated Professor, National Water Research Center, Egypt
Atef Hamdy, Director of Research - Istituto Agronomico Mediterraneo, Bari, Italy

Abstract

Abstract: Integrated water resources planning and management are considered a very complex issue. It is usually solved through the multi-sectoral, interdisciplinary and hierarchal decomposition approaches. In general, integrated resource 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) techniques for integrated water resource management of a cropped area. Thus, an area of about 120000 Hectares located at Northern Nile River Delta area with a coastal zone on the Mediterranean was selected. GIS was applied to represent the area with its different environment, social, economic, and water factors. Different randomization cropping pattern distribution scenarios were proposed. Through the merging of GIS and MCE approaches, three scenarios were run and evaluated at three different levels that are farm, canal catchment area and whole area. This merging results in a very powerful tool for evaluation of different plans. The merging of GIS and MCE is really facilitated the decision making process for such type of integrated water management Problems.