Planning and Managing the Integrated Water System: A Spatial Decision Support System to Analyze the Infrastructure Performances

Abstract

The demand for water is constantly increasing, while there are factors related to climate change and pollution that make it less and less available. Addressing this problem means being able to face it with a global approach, which takes into account that human beings need water to survive, as well as all the systems on which they rely, namely sanitation, health, education, business, and industry. While human behavior is influenced by the growing awareness on this topic promoted by organizations specifically targeting this mission, the need to protect water resources in operational terms has led mainly to the need for smart urban infrastructure planning, consistent with the objective of promoting sustainable development. To this aim, the authorities in charge of monitoring the implementation of the investment plans by operators need to perform accurate evaluations of the technical quality of the services provided. The present paper introduces a framework to design a Multi-criteria Spatial Decision Support System, conceived to help decision-makers define and analyze the investment priorities of the individual service operators. By building a knowledge model of the network under investigation, decision-makers are aware of physical components of the whole system and are provided with an intervention priority index related to the network objects that could be affected by the planning action to be implemented.

AHP-GeoTOPSIS method to analyze priority areas for sugarcane plantation development in Lamongan Regency

“…The closer the value of an alternative is to 1, the better and ideal the alternative is. Conversely, the closer the value of an alternative is to 0, the worse and not ideal the alternative is [14].…”

Adaptive Thinking in Cities: Urban Continuity within Built Environments

“…This area of study can benefit from further research, such as the quantitative analyses of heritage adaptive reuse contributions to social, environmental and economic sustainability, particularly using macro-indicators and assessing target achievements. Multi-criteria analysis could be also be applied to prioritise between macro-indicators [106]. Additional work on developing a vulnerability index that identifies geographical areas that would particularly benefit from regeneration processes of historic buildings would be beneficial [107], including a better understanding of adaptive reuse and regeneration processes, community displacement and values of heritage.…”

Multicriteria Decision Making and Water Infrastructure: An Application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process for a Sustainable Ranking of Investments

“…Moreoever, recently, a decision support system was developed for emergency managers, to identify and rank the best options for water supply in crises. The approach used, based on the AHP, made it possible to integrate scientific and specialist knowledge into the decision-making process and to include criteria that are often overlooked in other methods and tools, such as social impacts [32]. Another work presents a multi-criteria decision support methodology for the selection and ranking of rehabilitation interventions in urban water infrastructures [33].…”