Title: Decision aid for hydropower project prioritisation in Nepal by applying Visual PROMETHEE

Authors: Rana Pratap Singh; Hans Peter Nachtnebel

Addresses: Inst. of Water Management, Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Department of Water-Atmosphere-Environment, University of BOKU, A-1190 Vienna, Muthgasse 18, Austria ' Inst. of Water Management, Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Department of Water-Atmosphere-Environment, University of BOKU, A-1190 Vienna, Muthgasse 18, Austria

Abstract: Nepal needs appropriate decision framework for exploring huge hydropower potential, This work primarily proposes a decision framework applicable to small hydropower schemes (1 to 25 MW) to assist in prioritisation. In the future a similar approach could be developed to prioritise hydropower projects across a broad capacity range. This paper, based on a multi-criteria approach, has the main objective to develop a decision support tool to evaluate, compare and rank alternative proposals of hydropower schemes. The proposed framework organised wide range of criteria under five goals referring to economic, social, environmental, political objectives and additionally, their inherent uncertainties. Six Nepalese pilot sites with comparable capacity were identified for testing the decision framework and Visual PROMETHEE (VP) application proved to be effective for decision making. Thus Visual PROMETHEE could be used for developing decision aid and effective in decision making or prioritising hydropower options exhibiting quite different features.

Keywords: hydropower projects; scale; MCDA; Visual PROMETHEE; Nepal; decision support systems; DSS; project prioritisation; multicriteria decision analysis; multicriteria decision making; MCDM; economic objectives; social objectives; environmental objectives; political objectives; uncertainties.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMCDM.2016.081389

International Journal of Multicriteria Decision Making, 2016 Vol.6 No.4, pp.316 - 342

Received: 09 May 2015
Accepted: 20 Aug 2016
Published online: 06 Jan 2017 *

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