Possibility of cooperative management in groundwater resources using an evolutionary hydro-economic simulation-optimization model

Abstract Groundwater as an open-access and a common pool resource (CPR) among several beneficiaries faces overexploitation especially in arid and semi-arid regions. To tackle such problems, cooperative management method using game theory concepts could be considered as an effective approach in operating a CPR. This study examines the effect of cooperation and internalization of environmental damages on managing the groundwater resources in Namdan aquifer located in Fars province, Iran. For this purpose, an evolutionary hydro-economic simulation-optimization model has been developed and various cooperation and environmental damages internalization scenarios have been considered to the study area over a planning horizon of 30 years. Continuous ant colony optimization (CACO) algorithm, which is an innovative application in this area of study has been applied to the simulation- optimization model. Some cooperative game theory methods have been used to allocate the obtained net benefits. The results indicate that under the full-cooperation scenario, the highest value of the sum of net benefits has been gained for any value of environmental damages. Moreover, internalizing the environmental damages has caused increase in the sum of net benefits among all cooperation scenarios. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted to assess the effect of changing the environmental damages value and also the importance factor of extraction externalities. The results of these analysis indicate that the cooperation conditions are independent of the value of environmental damages and also the intensity of extraction externalities. The methodology presented in this study provides water resource managers with a cooperative management platform in order to evaluate the possibilities of sustainable development of groundwater resources in more realistic conditions. The application of an efficient evolutionary algorithm provides a variety of realistic problems with an opportunity to overcome the limitations of traditional optimization techniques.

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