Toward Sustainable Urban Drainage Infrastructure Planning: A Combined Multiobjective Optimization and Multicriteria Decision-Making Platform

Abstract

This study aims to introduce a generic solution in the context of a multicriteria decision making (MCDM) platform to (1) facilitate the optimization of hybrid (de)centralized urban drainage infrastructures with many decisions and often conflicting objectives (reliability, resilience, sustainability, and construction costs); (2) investigate the trade-offs between performance indicators and system configuration; and(3) avoid conflicts between optimization analysts and decision makers by involving the latter in different stages of planning. For this purpose, first, all optimum design scenarios of hybrid urban drainage systems (UDSs) are generated through multiobjective optimization (MOO). Then a platform based on MCDM is presented to comprehensively analyze the solutions found by MOO and to rank the solutions. For the sake of demonstration, the proposed framework is applied to a real case study. The results confirm the ability of the proposed framework in handling many decisions, objectives, and indicators for solving a complex optimization problem in a reasonable time by delivering realistic solutions. In addition, the results demonstrate the important role of the degree of (de)centralization (DC) and the layout configuration in obtaining optimal solutions.

Integrating Structural Resilience in the Design of Urban Drainage Networks in Flat Areas Using a Simplified Multi-Objective Optimization Framework

“…Mathematically, the optimization of separate stormwater collection networks can be formulated as follows [39]:…”

“…For systematic optimization, it is vital to systematically generate various UDS schemes that satisfy all technical and physical constraints. As discussed in the Introduction section, 2021) [24,39] developed two simulation-optimization frameworks to solve this highly complex optimization problem. They tried to simultaneously find the optimal combination of layout, DC, and system hydraulic specifications among numerous candidates.…”

“…To account for the effect of DC on the resilience of the layout, Bakhshipour et. al., (2020) [39] proposed Equation (12) to quantify the structural resilience.…”

“…al. (2020) [39] can also consider structural resilience, but for the same case study, it needed 800,000 hydraulic simulations until convergence. However, as they integrated other objectives like reliability, functional resilience, and sustainability and green-gray-blue infrastructures as decisions instead of pipe-only in this study, the results cannot be compared directly.…”

“…In a follow-up study, Bakhshipour et al (2021) [39] included other performance indicators such as resilience and sustainability in their design. To do that, they introduced a multicriteria decision-making model for sustainable planning of UDSs considering different centralized or decentralized strategies.…”