Assessment of modern approach of water governance in the development of water exploitation systems in Sistan region

Water is the basis of life, the foundation of nature, and the pillar of social, economic, and cultural development of societies. So, the supply of safe and consumable water has always been a concern. On the other hand, a major challenge of modern societies is the lack of precipitation and frequent droughts. Thus, the present paper assesses the principles of water governance in the Sistan region with respect to the development of water exploitation systems with an environmental approach and presents an integrated multi-attribute decision-making model with a water governance approach in the Sistan region. The simple additive weighting (SAW) method that is used here is one of the multiple attribute decision making (MADM) methods. The indicators of water governance principles were derived from the opinions of 30 water experts, faculty members, and water users in the Sistan region by the SAW method, and weights were assigned to them to form MADM matrices. According to the results, six indicators were derived as the indicators determining the principles of water governance. ‘Traditional users’ was selected as the strongest system and ‘irrigation and drainage networks exploitation companies’ as the weakest system. Also, according to the results of water experts, the first rank was assigned to ‘irrigation and drainage networks exploitation companies’ (A2) with the final crisp score of 6.818 followed by ‘water user cooperatives’ (A4) with the final crisp score of 6.515 in the second rank and ‘private firms’ (A6) with the final crisp score of 6.308 in the third rank.