Application of multi-agent decision-making methods in hydrological ecosystem services management

Massoud Behboudian; Reza Kerachian; Kasra Motlaghzadeh; Saeed Ashrafi

doi:10.1016/j.mex.2023.102130

Application of multi-agent decision-making methods in hydrological ecosystem services management

MethodsX. 2023 Mar 23:10:102130. doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2023.102130. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Massoud Behboudian^{1

2}, Reza Kerachian², Kasra Motlaghzadeh³, Saeed Ashrafi⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED), KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
² School of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
³ Department of System Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada.
⁴ Department of Engineering System and Environment, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.

Abstract

In this paper, a methodology is presented for managing hydrological ecosystem services by taking into account the hierarchy of stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. With this in mind, a water allocation model is first used for allocating water resources to demands. Then, several ecosystem services (ESs)-based criteria are defined to evaluate hydrological ESs of water resources management policies. A set of water and environmental resources management strategies (alternatives) are defined for decision-makers, and several drought management strategies are determined to decrease the area of key crops and water demands of agricultural nodes. To model a multi-agent multi-criteria decision-making problem for managing hydrological ESs, three main steps are considered as follows:•Different ES-based criteria (i.e., economic profit, NPP, and ecological index) are defined, and their grade-based values are estimated.•Several strategies are defined for stakeholders at different levels.•A recursive evidential reasoning (ER) approach, which considers a hierarchical structure for decision-makers and a leader-follower game, is used to select the best strategy for each decision-maker.The applicability and efficiency of the methodology are illustrated by applying it to a real-world case study. The methodology is general and can be easily applied to other study areas.

Keywords: Ecosystem services-based criteria; Evidential reasoning; Group decision-making; Hierarchical structure of stakeholders; Multi-agent decision-making method to manage ecosystem services; Water resources management scenarios.