A multi-criteria model analysis framework for assessing integrated water-energy system transformation pathways

Abstract

Sustainable development objectives surrounding water and energy systems are increasingly interdependent, and yet the associated performance metrics are often distinct. Regional planners tasked with designing future supply systems therefore require multi-criteria analysis methods and tools to determine a suitable combination of technologies and scale of investments. Previous research focused on optimizing system development strategy with respect to a single design objective, leading to potentially negative outcomes for other important sustainability metrics. This paper addresses this limitation, and presents a flexible and interactive multi-criteria model analysis framework and its application to long-term energy and freshwater supply planning at national or regional scales. The framework incorporates a linear systems-engineering model of the coupled supply technologies and inter-provincial electricity and water transmission networks. The multi-criteria analysis approach enables the interactive specification of diverse decision-making preferences for disparate criteria, and leads to learning on trade-o↵s between the resulting criteria values of the corresponding Pareto-optimal solutions. A case study of the water-stressed nation of Saudi Arabia explores preferences combining aspiration and reservation levels in terms of cost, water sustainability and CO 2 emissions. The analysis reveals a suite of trade-o↵ solutions, in which potential integrated system configurations remain relatively ambitious from both an economic and environmental perspective. The identified cost savings would have a major impact on the a↵ordability of water and electricity services in Saudi Arabia.

Spatial and temporal synchronization of water and energy systems: Towards a single integrated optimization model for long-term resource planning

“…The preferences for the linked water and energy criterion are to be elicited during a participative stakeholder process involving all affected parties. Depending on the number and types of stakeholders involved the preferences are to be translated into objective function weights using methodologies such as the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), goal-programming or the reference point methodology [49] [60] [61]. In this paper the model only considers system costs with all other objective function component weights being 0.…”

“…In these models, water systems are however under-represented and physical water resources often ignored. Few models [10,12,47,48,49] which do include more detailed water systems reveal additional issues related to the disaggregation and synchronization of the two systems across different scales. A few studies focus on more general, broader links in the energy, water and other economic sectors using methodologies like the open source Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), input-output analysis and life-cycle analysis [50,51,52,53,54].…”

The Nexus Solutions Tool (NEST): An open platform for optimizing multi-scale energy-water-land system transformations

“…The single-objective LP formulation can also readily be transformed to handle multiple objectives, such as minimum total investments, emission level or other environmental indicators Parkinson et al (2018b).…”

Bendrosios žemės ūkio politikos tiesioginių išmokų sistemos poveikio žemės ūkio tvarumui vertinimas

“…The complex assessment approach integrating all sustainability dimensions was developed both theoretically and with its application in various researches (Ikerd 1993;Piorr 2003;Gomiero et al 2006Gomiero et al , 2011Van Cauwenbergh et al 2007;Sydorovych,Wossink 2008;Selomane 2015;Slätmo 2017, Parkinson 2018etc. ).…”