Analytic hierarchy process-based criterion weighting for water resources management projects

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Prioritizing water resources projects requires decision-makers to balance hydrological performance, engineering feasibility, environmental and social sustainability, and economic value under limited budgets and implementation resources. Existing assessment approaches are often tailored to particular project types or locations, limiting their direct application to diverse project portfolios. The study objectives were to develop an analytic hierarchy process-based multi-criteria decision-making framework for deriving criterion weights for water resources management project assessment, using Chiang Mai Province, Thailand, as the empirical context.METHODS: The framework was developed by synthesizing water resources management principles, practical project-assessment considerations, and relevant multi-criteria decision-making literature. It comprised four main dimensions and ۱۸ operational subcriteria. Expert judgments from six senior water resources and irrigation professionals, each with at least ۲۰ years of experience, were analyzed using the AHP framework. Individual expert judgments were evaluated for consistency and aggregated using the geometric mean. Local weights were calculated using the eigenvector method and combined with the corresponding main-dimension weights to obtain global priorities.FINDINGS: Engineering and Implementation Feasibility received the highest main-dimension weight (۳۲.۵۸ percent), followed by Economic Performance (۲۵.۸۴ percent), Environmental and Social Sustainability (۲۱.۸۷ percent), and Water Resource and Hydrological Performance (۱۹.۷۱ percent). At the global level, Cost Effectiveness ranked first (۱۳.۹۹ percent), followed by Structural Scale (۱۱.۵۸ percent), Foundation Suitability (۱۰.۶۰ percent), and Storage and Hydrological Adequacy (۸.۹۳ percent). These four subcriteria accounted for ۴۵.۱۰ percent of the total weight. The top ۱۱ subcriteria accounted for ۸۱.۸۸ percent and included elements from all four dimensions, demonstrating that broader assessment requires technical, economic, hydrological, environmental, and social considerations.CONCLUSION: The framework provides a transparent structure for organizing criteria and deriving context-specific priorities for water resources project assessment. It can support the development of project screening, portfolio comparison, and budget-prioritization procedures when combined with project-level performance data and explicit scoring rules. The reported weights represent the judgments of the study panel and should be recalibrated for other locations, project types, and stakeholder groups. Further application should develop an operational scoring rubric and evaluate sensitivity, robustness, and project-ranking stability.

کلیدواژه ها:

Criteria weighting ، Decision support ، Engineering feasibility ، Expert judgment ، Irrigation development ، Sustainable infrastructure appraisal.