Decision making for water leakage management in water distribution systems

Abstract

This paper presents an application of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for decision-making of leakage management in water distribution systems. It will be considered not only costs of project development, but also some social and environmental externalities, in order to achieve that decision making could fit more reality of water supply company and its environment. To apply AHP correctly and for results validation, it is imperative to focus on requirements that must have comparison matrices to be considered valid. These requirements are: positivity of its components, uniformity, reciprocity and consistency, the latter having considerable complexity, which has led to generation of options for improvement and those are shown in this article.