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A new approach to groundwater quantity (hydraulic) management, based on a multicriterion decision aid methodology, is presented. The method couples a hydrodynamic groundwater flow simulation model with the decision aid one. It takes into account multiple criteria used by the decision maker (DM) in evaluating a management scenario as well as the hydrodynamic behavior of the groundwater system. The finite element and embedding methods are used to integrate the groundwater flow model into a multiobjective linear programming (LP) problem. Constraints on head, pumping rates, hydraulic gradient and velocity vector may be included in the management model. The piecewise linear utility function is assessed for modeling the DM's preferences. The best compromise solution is determined from the continuous Pareto set by solving a piecewise LP problem. User friendly software was developed to realize this methodology which is able to treat real scale problems. An illustrative example of an unconfined aquifer management is presented. Nonlinearities resulting from functional dependence of aquifer parameters on hydraulic head are handled iteratively.

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