Integrated Management of a Canal Command in a River Delta using Multi-Objective Techniques

Multi-criteria or multi-objective decision-making is becoming increasingly popular as a decision support tool for natural resource management.Stakeholders as well as the planners can be involved in the decision making process, using this approach. This article deals with the use of multi-criteria (multi-objective) technique in solving some complex problems related to water resource management. Five objectives were considered in the study. The benefit of combining these objective functions with the decisionsupport tool is that the management of land and water resourcescan be made more effectively. Based on this concept, a methodology was developed through this study, for the water managers and decision-makers, to obtain a compromising solutionin terms of area allocated under different crops and the magnitude of farming system variables in a canal command area. This study was under taken in the Mahanadi Delta of India. Multi-objective techniques such as Sequential Linear Fuzzy Programming and Goal Programming were used for their simplicity in computation and flexibility in application. Using Fuzzy programming technique, the objective function values under benefit maximization, production maximization, investmentminimization, labour maximization and labour minimizationwere found to be 44.26 M INR, 8795 tonnes, 42.00 M INR and548 150 man-days, respectively. These results were found tobe quite compromising in nature. Goal programming technique wasalso used to arrive at a consensus in allocation of the resources. It was used to decide the best out of the eight alternative priorities. Results indicated that only five alternative goals (Goal1, Goal2, Goal3, Goal6 and Goal8) had distinct allocations while the other three alternatives (Goal4,Goal5 and Goal7) had allocations similar to either of the abovefive alternatives irrespective of their priority levels. Croppingintensity was found to be the maximum (238%) for two of thegoals (Goal6 and Goal7). Though the results of the study were forthe specific site, the multi-criteria techniques used and therecommendations evolved are of objective nature and are applicable at any location for decision-making.