INTERACTIVE FUZZY OPTIMIZATION FOR AN ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL BALANCE IN A RIVER SYSTEM

An interactive fuzzy approach is applied to develop a water quality management plan in a river basin for solving multi-objective optimization problems involving vague and imprecise information related to data, model formulation, and the decision maker's preferences. This approach is presented as a sustainable water quality management strategy in which the decision makers and the environmental analysts put forward their views on three major economic and environmental factors: river water quality, assimilative capacity, and treatment cost of wastewater. This methodology is illustrated in a case study of multi-objective water quality management in the Tou-Chen River Basin in northern Taiwan. The incorporation of these three economic and environmental factors demonstrates the capability of the fuzzy interactive multi-objective optimization approach and also works suitably in water quality management in a river basin by the trade-off procedures.