Assessment and prioritization of eco-revetment projects in urban rivers

• Published in: River research and applications 2009-10, Vol.25 (8), p.946-961
• Main Authors: Shi, Rui-Hua, Xu, Shi-Guo, Li, Xu-Guang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal and plant ecology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Applied sciences; assessment and prioritization; Biological and medical sciences; Buildings. Public works; China; Decision making; Delphi-AHP method; ecological revetment; Ecology; Economics; Exact sciences and technology; Fresh water ecosystems; Freshwater; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Fuzzy set theory; fuzzy TOPSIS; Hunhe River; Hydraulic constructions; Indicators; Mathematical analysis; River flow control. Flood control; river regulation; riverbank protection; Rivers; Sensitivity analysis; Synecology; urban rivers
• ISSN: 1535-1459; 1535-1467
• DOI: 10.1002/rra.1193

Ecological revetment for slope protection in urban rivers requires consideration of economic and ecological aspects and also of social aspects including recreation. Taking the Hunhe River as an example, our study established an evaluation system and a decision-making method for evaluating and prioritizing the eco-revetment projects. The Delphi method was used for collecting the opinions of experts, which include the relative importance of the indicators and the relative preference of the alternatives. The former was surveyed by pair comparison and processed applied analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The latter was described via linguistic variables, which need to be changed into the quantitative values for TOPSIS analysis. For that reason, we introduced the fuzzy set theory and established a fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making method based on TOPSIS to assess and prioritize the projects. The evaluation system includes economic, social, environment and ecological several aspects totalling eight indicators. The evaluating and prioritizing result of the projects shows that the three-dimensional vegetation net is the best slope protection measures in the study area. The sensitivity analyses of indicator weights and different calculation methods were performed to demonstrate the reliability of the results. The sensitivity analyses indicate that construction cost and maintenance cost are dominant factors during the alternatives prioritization. The distance calculation method and normalization technique are insensitive to the prioritization results. The methodology proposed by this paper offers an effective and feasible tool for managers to evaluate and choose the optimal engineering measures of riverbank protection. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley '' Sons, Ltd.