Planning protocol for pre-feasibility studies of water resources projects in developing countries

The research objective is to develop a Planning Protocol for Pre-Feasibility Studies of Water Resources Projects in Developing Countries to be used by civil and environmental engineers, and other planning specialists. Recently Emphasized Objectives and Policy Issues (REOPI) make project planning in developing countries different from that applied in developed countries. Modern water resources planning must consider the REOPI, at various points in the project cycle. The REOPI are: sustainability; environmental quality; environmental economics; environmental justice; global, international, and inter-basin impacts of projects; uncertainty; and risk-benefit analysis.; At the pre-feasibility study phase, the traditional factors and the REOPI can be analyzed by two partially overlapping broad measures incorporating many components of feasibility: Implementability and Sustainability. The HYDRO project planning PROtocol (HYDROPRO) provides two numerical decimal values for and against proceeding to a feasibility study. Such results provide valuable guidance to decision-makers and the publics. Due to data deficiencies for the REOPI from actual projects, data from a hypothetical case study of a proposed water resources project (based on a case study of the Upper Narmada River Basin, India) was used to test HYDROPRO. Testing of HYDROPRO using undergraduate and graduate students to represent (through role-play) the various publics (public agencies, non-governmental organizations, stakeholders with economic interests, and interested observers) gave an evaluation of the project with ratings for Implementability and Sustainability for whether to proceed to the feasibility study or to reject the project. An additional “role-play” was done by the researcher using the same project for the case of a politically-dominated decision process.; The research for this thesis shows, through the development of an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model, that measures of Implementability and Sustainability can be studied effectively and at reasonable cost. Technical evaluation of the REOPI is possible in a systematic multi-objective decision framework, the AHP, that considers commensurate and non-commensurate parameters together and separately as required in the real world. Participation of relevant publics can be developed into representative numerical values and can be directly incorporated into a multi-objective decision analysis that assists decision-makers, gains support from the relevant publics, and improves project outcome.