Optimal Water Allocation by Equilibrating Between Agricultural and Environmental Sectors in River Basins

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The aim of this study was to optimal surface water resource management in the river-lake connected basins which are faced with water scarcity. In these regions, meeting the water demands of stakeholders along with supplying the environmental water requirements are critical and controversial issues. In this research, a multi-objective water allocation model which addresses the socio-economic and environmental objectives was developed, and a new simple method has been introduced for equilibrating between the sectors among which there are main conflicts. The proposed method was examined in the Zarrineh and Simineh rivers basins in Iran. These basins are the main surface water suppliers of the Lake Urmia which is facing a shrinkage challenge. As the agricultural sector is the main water user in the Lake Urmia basin, so there are significant conflicts between this sector and Lake Urmia's environment. Hence, the equilibrium status is obtained between these two stakeholders through drawing the graph of their utility functions versus risk parameter in the compromise programming technique. The proposed model can supply the domestic, industrial and agricultural demands 92.3, 100 and 60.8% respectively. Moreover, the ecological requirements of the rivers are supplied totally, and that of Lake Urmia amounts to 67.45%.