Social resolution of conflicts over water resources allocation in a river basin using cooperative game theory approaches: a case study

ABSTRACT In this paper, cooperative game theory (CGT) approaches are used for water allocation in a river basin considering equity benefit shares among stakeholders. An optimization model is initially developed for allocating water to competing users including agricultural, industrial, and environmental users based on both economic objectives. The model is implemented to determine water shares for different likely coalitions among water users. Then, CGT approaches such as Shapely, Nucleolus, and Nash-Harsanyi are used for reallocating net profits to the users as an attempt to encourage them to participate in equitable cooperation. Finally, the results of different game theoretic approaches are evaluated using the stability index and voting methods such as social choice and fallback bargaining. The proposed methodology is applied to the Zayandehrood River basin located in central part of Iran which struggles with water scarcity. The different CGT approaches applied to two predefined real-life scenarios in the basin under study and their performance were evaluated. The results indicate the proper performance of both Nash-Harsanyi and Shapely methods for pessimist and optimistic scenarios, respectively. It is also found that application of the proposed methodology effectively increases the users’ benefits in the study region through optimal water allocation and reallocation of benefits.