Goal Programming For Sustainability In Total Water Management

With the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) of Sustainability, total water managementefforts must analyze alternatives to address the potentially conflicting goals of economics(financial), environmental, and social issues. Goal programming is a technique whichuses optimization methods to provide a means to solve a problem by striving towardsmultiple objectives simultaneously. This research seeks to apply an optimizationframework to the integrated water supply planning process. The research has developeda methodology to that can successfully generate a feasible set of alternative solutionswhile balancing all three goals of the TBL.Performance measures for each of the three goals (economic, environmental, andsocial) are the core building blocks to enable analysis of total water management plans.Generally, economic goals are well understood and defined. Over the past decade,environmental goals have been developing enhanced understanding and usage. Specialattention will be paid to the third pillar of sustainability – social, which is generallyagreed that measures are lacking. A targeted survey of industry experts indicated that thesocial sustainability metrics showing the most promise for use are related to affordability,reliability, and resilience.Furthermore, the research showed that the goal programming methodology coulduse existing data (utility master plans) and tools (Excel) to execute the model and developtradeoffs between the various aspects of the TBL. In the demonstration with real worldutility data, examples are shown detailing the relative costs for enhanced environmentaland social goal achievement. The methodology has the potential to provide increasedvisibility to cost, societal and environmental issues for to the decision makers in order toenhance the decision analysis of water supply strategies by incorporating theenvironmental and social aspects of sustainability into the decision process.