Regional Water Resources Security Evaluation Based on a Hybrid Fuzzy BWM-TOPSIS Method

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Water Resource Management
• Sustainable Development

Background:

• Water resource security is critical for China's sustainable development, yet lacks unified evaluation methods.
• Existing evaluation approaches are often impractical for regional water security assessments.
• Defining and measuring water security, encompassing both quantity and quality, remains a challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel evaluation methodology for regional water resource security.
• To integrate water quantity and quality indicators into a comprehensive assessment framework.
• To apply and validate the proposed method in North China's regional water security evaluation.

Main Methods:

• Developed a two-aspect approach: water quantity security and water quality security.
• Incorporated novel indicators for water quality security: garbage disposal rate, excellent water resources proportion, and functional water body loss proportion.
• Employed the fuzzy Best-Worst Method (BWM) with triangular fuzzy linguistic sets to determine indicator weights and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) for regional evaluation, creating the fuzzy BWM-TOPSIS method.

Main Results:

• The fuzzy BWM-TOPSIS method was successfully applied to evaluate water security levels in six North China regions.
• Comparative analysis demonstrated the proposed method's effectiveness against equal weight TOPSIS and fuzzy BWM-Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods.
• Sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the indicator weights in the evaluation.

Conclusions:

• The fuzzy BWM-TOPSIS method offers a feasible and effective approach for regional water resource security evaluation.
• The study provides valuable insights and data-driven suggestions for rational water resource utilization in North China.
• This methodology can support policy-making for enhancing national water resource security and promoting sustainable development.