Sustainable Water Management Solutions for Large Cities (Proceedings of symposium S2 held during the Seventh IAHS Scientific Assembly at Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, April 2005). IAHS Publ. 293, 2005, 73-82.

Abstract Water shortage in the arid and semiarid regions of the world has motivated the development of innovative integrated water management models. Integrated water management requires a comprehensive consideration of all related aspects, e.g. technical, social, environmental, institutional, political and financial. The conventional methods of cost-benefit analysis and single-objective models have been changed to multi-objective models. The city of Zahedan, in southeast Iran, has been studied as a case study. High population growth, on the one hand, and limited local freshwater resources and an inadequate water distribution system, on the other hand, have resulted in failures in supplying both drinking and sanitary water to the city in recent years. This paper investigates integration of several demand management measures such as leakage detection and distribution network rehabilitation, low volume water fixtures and water metering as well as the conjunctive use of surface and groundwater resources, using a multi-criteria decision making model. For integration of criteria, Compromise Programming has been used. The objectives and criteria include economic efficiency, public health and sustainability of the water supply system. The capability of Compromise Programming was revealed as an efficient tool for IWRM for urban water. This model derives optimum long-term plans for the implementation and usage of resources. The results reveal that demand management delays a water transfer project for Zahedan City for 20 years. The method is capable of being employed by decision makers in comprehensive urban water management studies.

Keywords arid regions; Compromise Programming; demand management; integrated; Iran; long distance water transfer; multi-criteria decision making; urban water management