Sustainable management of hydroelectric basins: multicriteria analysis on social and environmental assessment of alternative sites for settlement of dug sediments

​Referring to the management of artificial basins, the reservoir sedimentation caused by erosion process and the consequent sediment transport and deposit in the basin is a fundamental aspect to be considered. The filling, or partial filling, with silt of a reservoir that receives fine-grained sediment brought in by streams and surface runoff leads to a progressive reduction of basin hydrological capacity and hydropower plant efficiency.
To limit this risk, an efficient and sustainable hydroelectric basin management plan has to include a periodic removal of great amount of dug sediments and their settlement in proper storage sites. From this perspective, the identification of one or more storage permanent, or temporary, sites and the selection of the most proper ones gain in a strategic importance.
The object of this analysis is to develop a Decision Support System (DSS) for the selection and preliminary assessment of potential settlement sites for dug sediments based on a Multi-criteria Analysis (MCA). This DSS represents a useful ex ante support tool for the examination of the intervention’s strategic choices related to preferential sites in the prefeasibility study.

The proposed methodology allows make a comparative assessment between various settlement site alternatives, or combination of them, in order to define a ranking and to identify the best site(s), from a social and environmental point of view. ​