Stakeholder preference elicitation and modelling in multi-criteria decision analysis – A case study on urban water supply

Integration of multiple objectives to evaluate the alternative operating rules for urban water supply reservoir systems can be effectively accomplished by multi-criteria decision aid techniques, where preference elicitation and modelling plays an important role. This paper describes a preference elicitation and modelling procedure involving the multi-criteria outranking method PROMETHEE in evaluating these alternative operating rules. The Melbourne water supply system was considered as the case study. Eight performance measures (PMs) were identified under four main objectives to evaluate the system performance under alternative operating rules. Three major hypothetical stakeholder groups namely, resource managers, water users, and environmental interest groups were considered in decision-making. An interviewer-assisted questionnaire survey was used to derive the preference functions and weights of the PMs. The evaluation of alternative operating rules is not covered in this paper, rather an approach to elicit and model stakeholder preferences in decision-making is described.