IWRA Proceedings

AbstractThe increasing complexity of the water resource management problems make it less and less possible for a single decision maker to consider all relevant aspects of these problems. As a result, many decision making problems, in the real world, take place in group settings with incomplete information (fuzzy group decision making). In a real world group decision making problem, decision makers (DMs) have different knowledge, proficiency and experiences and therefore the importance of each expert against an attribute may not be equal. In many studies this difference of knowledge and experiences (relative weight) of each expert has not been considered and equal weight has been assigned to each expert. Obviously, it is inconsequential and creates imprecise and inaccurate solutions. In this paper, a new method has been proposed to evaluate relative weights of DMs. This method integrates subjective preferences of group manager and opinions of DMs about themselves simultaneously and to assess the relative weights of DMs. By using this method in group decision making problems, decision problems close in reality and final solution is selected more accurately. The proposed method is a generalized model, which can be applied to great variety of practical problems encountered in the water resource management.