Sustainability assessment of urban water systems: a case study Available to Purchase

The concept of sustainability has received much attention from urban water systems planners and decision makers during the last two decades. A variety of system analysis tools have been used to assess the performance of urban water systems in achieving sustainability goals. This paper presents the lessons learned from conducting a hypothetical case study in the context of sustainability assessment of urban water systems. A fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, a well-known multi-criteria decision-making tool, is employed in terms of a group decision-making model as the sustainability assessment method. The case study is performed for a hypothetical region in Iran; however, data and information obtained from Tehran's urban water system are applied to simulate the real-world situation in the case study. The objective of the case study is the sustainability assessment and prioritisation of development scenarios for the region's urban water system. The results show that group decision-making models are efficient tools to provide a framework for incorporating stakeholder participation into the decision-making processes of urban water systems development. Also, fuzzy techniques can aid decision makers in dealing with the uncertainties and ambiguities of sustainability assessment models, particularly when most data and information are non-quantitative.