Modeling of decision-makers negotiations in reservoir operation with respect to water quality and environmental issues

Decision-makers have different and sometimes conflicting goals with utilities in operating dam reservoirs. As repeated interactions exist between decision-makers in the long-term, and the utility of each decision-making organization is affected not only by its selected strategy, but also by other rivals' strategies; selecting and prioritizing optimum strategies from a decision maker's point of view are of great importance while interacting with others. In this paper, a model based on a fuzzy set theory, for determining the priority of decision-makers' strategies in optimal qualitative-quantitative operation management of dam reservoir is presented. The fuzzy priority matrix is developed via defining membership functions of a fuzzy set for each decision maker's strategies, so that all uncertainties are taken into account. This matrix includes priorities assigned to possible combination for other decision makers' strategies in bargaining with each player's viewpoint. Here, the 15-Khordad Dam located in the central part of Iran, suffering from low water quality, was studied in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the model. Then, the range of quality of water withdrawal agreed by all decision-makers was determined using the prioritization matrix based on fuzzy logic. The results showed that the model proposed in the study had high effectiveness model.