Risk Assessment of Mashhad Water Supply Projects and Priorities

Today, for the planners, water supply is the most basic challenges for various sectors in many parts of the world and especially in Iran. Water conveyances from different locations have been the current strategies to resolve this challenge besides the non- structural management practices that take a large amount of credits and national budgets. In this paper, opportunities and challenges of Mashhad water supply schemes have been investigated case by case basis, and an integrated approach to risk assessment is provided. In the first part of the article, risk factors around the Mashhad water supply options were extracted, based on the method of brainstorming; and the average risk of each option has been calculated. In the second part, projects risks were calculated according to the possibility amplitude definition. The results showed, although the lowest average risk is associated with the option of water conveyance from Hezarmasjed project, wastewater transmission to the Mashhad West and water replacing by agricultural resources has a lowest possibility domain of risk than other options based on the expert's perspectives. In fact, the results show that using of possibility domain of risk to prioritize options (managerial decisions) can be very helpful. Finally various options are prioritized based on the parameters of the project cost, the volume of water transmission for each project, risk and coefficient of water recycling.