A Fair Approach for Multi-Objective Water Resources Allocation

Abstract

Due to the effect of climate change, rapid population growth and widespread water pollution, fresh water becomes an increasingly scarce natural resource. Optimal allocation of water resources is one of the most effective resolutions to deal with rising water demand and insufficient freshwater resources. This study proposes a fair approach for water resources allocation by employing the Sperner's lemma to solve the conflicts of different objectives and those of competing regions. A multi-objective optimal allocation model is firstly formulated to generate the Pareto frontier surface, which maximizes the economic interest while minimizing the amount of organic pollutants. Subsequently, the approach searches for acceptable allocation schemes over the Pareto frontier surfaces through the total water quantity and envy-free constraints. The proposed model is applied to the middle and lower reaches of Hanjiang river basin in China. Results indicate that water allocation between multi-region can achieve Nash equilibrium by using the water conflict resolution method to select fair water allocation schemes, in which each region obtains its preferred water quantity. The proposed approach is proved effective for water resources management in the case study and demonstrates the potential for effective application in other basins.

Distributive Justice and Sustainability Goals in Transboundary Rivers: Case of the Nile Basin

“…In spite of these challenges, however, research progress in domains such as cooperative game theories (Gintis, 2000;Madani and Dinar, 2012) and morally informed allocation and optimization techniques (Ciullo et al, 2020) illustrate potential opportunities and operationalization mechanisms of distributive justice in transboundary water resources management. In value optimization techniques, for instance, the role of distributive justice is illustrated through explicitly applying ethical principles to how optimization problems are formulated in terms of objectives and constraints (Tian et al, 2019;Ciullo et al, 2020). For instance, assuming that Ethiopia and Egypt were to negotiate with the goal of achieving distributive justice between the two riparian states, a number of underlying moral principles (e.g., utilitarianism (Mill, 1895), egalitarianism (Arneson, 2002), prioritarianism (Arneson, 2000), sufficientarianism (Gosseries, 2011), and Pareto principle (Kaplow and Shavell, 2003)) can be identified and used to quantify options to facilitate negotiation between parties.…”

Adaptive optimal allocation of water resources response to future water availability and water demand in the Han River basin, China

“…In addition, human activities (e.g., land use/cover change, water transfer projects, water-saving measure, the rapidly development of socioeconomy, etc.) may also alter the distribution and volume of water availability and water demand 1 , 12 – 15 . For instance, shifts in farmland area and cover types would result in altered conditions of the underlying surface that was deeply related to the hydrological response 12 , 14 ; the reduced available water volume would be observed in the water donor area because of water transfer project 15 ; the application of water saving measure can increase the water-use efficiency and reduce the local water shortage degree 1 , 13 ; the shifts in the regional population and the constitution of different water-use units would significantly change local water demand.…”

Computer Modeling for the Operation Optimization of Mula Reservoir, Upper Godavari Basin, India, Using the Jaya Algorithm

“…Water is among the most important ones for living beings. Freshwater has now become a scarce natural resource due to the effect of climate change and water pollution, and majorly due to the rapid increase of population [1]. The management of water resources has been the supreme prerequisite for today's rapidly developing world, as the conflict between the supply and requirement of water resources has become a major concern.…”

“…The management of water resources has been the supreme prerequisite for today's rapidly developing world, as the conflict between the supply and requirement of water resources has become a major concern. These conflicts can be resolved by developing new water resource projects and increasing the overall management efficiency [1]. The development of a new water resource project to serve human needs is not easy due to environmental issues and because the cost of building new projects increases every year; therefore, the operation optimization of the existing projects is a better operation optimization and was found to yield good results.…”