Towards Agricultural Water Management Decisions in the Context of WELF Nexus

A Multi-criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) framework based on the combination of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAVT/MAUT) with the Weights Assessment through Prioritization method (WAP) is proposed for decision problems related to agricultural water management in the context of water-energy-land-food (WELF) nexus. The implementation of the framework supports a Decision Maker (DM) to quantify his/her preferences in a structured and rational way, in order to select the best alternative for agricultural water management. Through the use of the Multicriteria Interactive Intelligence Decision Aiding System (MIIDAS), marginal utilities functions for all the criteria are constructed. The criteria are grouped in points of view, which may refer to individual nexus elements and costs for investments or agricultural inputs. The WAP software assists the DM to assess the relative importance of the criteria and estimate their weights.