Technical-Economic Feasibility Study on Resolving Zanjan’s Water Shortage from Shahriar Dam vs. Moshampa Dam; Challenges and Solutions

Despite Zanjan’s water demand expected on resources of Ghezel Ozan River, the recent years crisis of water shortage in the basin has made the Ministry of Energy to lower Zanjan’s potable and industrial water allocation of 75MCM (pre-allocated from Moshampa Dam) to 50MCM distributed uniformly throughout the year. However, completion of Shahriar Dam located down stream of Moshampa Dam, has brought up the idea of introducing Moshampa Dam’s objectives into Shahriar Dam as a 2-conflicting-alternative decision making problem. To this end, Iran Water Resources Management Co. devolved a project entitled “Technical-Economic Feasibility Study on Resolving Zanjan’s Water Shortage from Shahriar Dam vs. Moshampa Dam; Challenges and Solutions” to Shahid Chamran Uni. Of Ahvaz. In the first step, the required system of water supply and transmission were calculated in terms of technical components, capital and operation-maintenance cost for both scenarios over a 30-year planning horizon. In the second step, by introducing five major decision criteria (including economics, socio-economic aspects, technical measures, sustainability, and water resources management) a classic Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was implemented on the decision making problem. In the next step, to introduce uncertainties in pair-wise comparisons of the classic AHP, first the decision maker’s judgments were fuzzified using a triangle fuzzy numbers for two levels of uncertainty including 𝛼−𝑐𝑢𝑡=0 and 𝛼−𝑐𝑢𝑡=0.5. A proper optimization algorithm was then applied to capture the possible extremes of weights and the global priorities of the two conflicting alternatives. Results showed that under both certain and uncertain circumstances in pair-wise comparisons, resolving Zanjan’s Water Shortage from Moshampa Dam had significantly more priority over the competing alternative.