Inexact mathematical programming for the management of water resources and environmental systems under multiple uncertainities

Water resources conservation and environmental protection have been challenging many regional planners and decision makers. Uncertainties exist in many related system components and may intensify the complexities in the efforts for generating desired plans for water resources and environmental management. Effective management should be based on a variety of decision support studies. Generally, optimization methods are useful for providing desired decision support. However, optimization modeling of water resources and environmental systems is often associated with complexities of interactive, dynamic and uncertain characteristics. To facilitate robust environmental management, advanced optimization methodologies that are able to reflect these complexities are desired.;The developed methodologies could help provide decision supports for managing various water resources and environmental management problems. These proposed methods improved upon the existing optimization approaches and had advantages in reflecting multiple uncertainties presented as fuzzy sets, probability distributions, interval parameters, functional intervals, fuzzy random variables, and distributions with fuzzy probabilities as well as their combinations. The obtained solutions were useful for analyzing tradeoffs among various environmental resources and socio-economic objectives, such that desired decision schemes could be identified.;In this dissertation research, a number of optimization-based decision support methodologies were developed and applied to water resources and environmental management systems. The following methods were included: (a) an inexact stochastic mix-integer linear semi-infinite programming approach for solid waste management and planning under uncertainty, (b) an interval-parameter fuzzy-stochastic semi-infinite mixed-integer linear programming method for waste management under uncertainty, (c) an interval-parameter two-stage stochastic semi-infinite programming method for water resources management under uncertainty, (d) an interval-parameter chance-constrained two-stage stochastic semi-infinite programming technique for environmental management under uncertainty, (e) a fuzzy random two-stage programming method for water resources management under dual uncertainties, (f) a two-stage fuzzy chance-constrained programming approach for water resources management under dual uncertainties, (g) an inexact fuzzy-stochastic programming method for water resources management under multiple uncertainties, and (h) an inexact fuzzy-chance-constrained two-stage mixed integer programming approach for solid waste management in the City of Regina. For each method, efforts were made for system conceptualization, model development, complexity analysis and case application.