Application of the analytic hierarchy process to irrigation project improvement

The emergence of the participatory development in the early 1990s has changed the priority in irrigation development from infrastructure construction to the capacity enhancement of irrigation managing entities. The method for the enhancement is most likely management reform by including farmer participation in irrigation project management. Farmer participation is generally considered to solve problems concerning water distribution or infrastructure deterioration and subsequently improve irrigation project performance measures such as crop yields. Thus far, however, the effects of the management reform on irrigation project performance have not yet been validated by quantitative data. If so, why does management reform become the main activity for performance improvement? Here another major concern arises, whether irrigation professionals consider the management reform as important for performance improvement, because the professional assessment has great influence on performance improvement planning.; This dissertation consists of primarily two parts. Both use the multi-criteria decision-making method called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In the first part, an AHP model for irrigation project evaluation is developed and used for quantitative assessment of the effects of irrigation project management on crop yields. The results show that management quality alone does not have a significant effect on crop yields, while water delivery service quality does have a significant effect. It is then inferred that management quality will have an effect on crop yields jointly with hardware suitability through improving water delivery services. In the second part, professional views on irrigation project evaluation for performance improvement are surveyed. Views are converted to relative importance of evaluation factors by AHP and then modeled using probability density functions. The models imply that irrigation professionals consider project-wide water delivery services as the most important followed by management and hardware factors. The relative importance of management and hardware factors appears to be the same.; In conclusion, farmer participation in irrigation management is essential for performance improvement, but its effect on irrigation project performance may not be significant. Project improvement planners need to properly understand the effects of farmer participation on irrigation project performance measures, together with some of the other factors noted above.