Prioritizing Watersheds Using a Novel Hybrid Decision Model Based on Fuzzy DEMATEL, Fuzzy ANP and Fuzzy VIKOR

Watershed management is defined as a comprehensive management planning that leads to good ecological, economic and social conditions in a watershed. Due to financial limitation and human resources, it is vital to prioritize watersheds for implementation of development strategies. It is a challenging problem to select watershed because of existence of multiple conflicting criteria and complex relations and influences among them. This paper is aimed to treat this problem by introducing a novel hybrid fuzzy decision making technique based on fuzzy DEMATEL, fuzzy ANP and fuzzy VIKOR for evaluating watersheds with respect to different development strategies. Five watersheds in Iran are considered as alternatives and different development strategies are defined in social, economic, environmental, managerial and technical sectors as criteria. The fuzzy DEMATEL method is used to establish interdependencies among the groups of strategies and their intensities. Then the weights of strategies are calculated by fuzzy ANP method. Finally, the watersheds are ranked by fuzzy VIKOR method. Also, the sensitivity analysis was performed.