ABSTRACT
Management of complex water resources systems rarely involves a single objective. This chapter looks at one example of a problem situation where there is a need to formulate goals, develop alternative plans, and design criteria to be used in the selection of a plan. It introduces levels of acceptability for each of the objectives, the nondominated solutions are best divided into two categories: the major alternatives and the compromises. The non-dominated solutions are the conceptual equivalents, in multi-objective problems, of a single optimal solution in a single-objective problem. Conflict provides the decision-motivating tension, a period of frustration, and dissatisfaction with the status quo of a current situation. A multiple goal satisfactum implies acceptable values of all objective functions. The weighting and constraint methods can be used to obtain non-dominated solutions when the objective functions and/or constraints are nonlinear.
