Integrating Equality and Stability to Resolve Water Allocation Issues with a Multiobjective Bilevel Programming Model

With rapid economic and social development, increasing water demands have made water scarcity a worldwide issue. Equitable, stable, and efficient water allocation, which includes water resources management and conflicting water demand management, needs a valid resolution. This paper develops a multiobjective bilevel model with the upper level reflecting the river basin authority’s allocation principle of equity and stability and the lower level aimed at ensuring maximal economic benefit effiency for each subarea. The Gini coefficient is introduced to seek equity in the water allocation strategies, a power index is applied to ensure stability in the water allocation solutions, and an economic efficiency function is designed to maximize the economic benefit efficiency in each subarea. The proposed multiobjective bilevel water allocation model is then applied to a case study in Qujiang River Basin in China, and demonstrates that the proposed model provides reasonable and practical water allocation strategies for river basin authorities.