Human risk assessment of Panchet Dam in India using TOPSIS and WASPAS Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods

Every river dam activity has definite beneficial effects but cannot circumvent its negative impact in the long run. The Panchet dam has been commissioned as a multipurpose river valley project under the authority of Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) across the river Damodar at the border of West Bengal and Jharkhand states of India in 1959 to overcome some problems like flood control, supply of irrigation, domestic and industrial water, hydroelectric power generation etc. But it has now become a threat to the surrounding people, due to rapid sedimentation and reduction in its water holding capacity. Human risk assessment of the dam thus claims importance and such an effort is executed in this work using Delphi Questionnaire and two Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods viz. Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS). At first 9 human risk alternatives (A1-A9) of the dam are identified using Delphi Questionnaire and rated them in order to prioritize using TOPSIS and WASPAS methods. Risk prioritization results of TOPSIS and WASPAS show somewhat differences. The integrated ‘Mean-Rank’ method is applied to provide final priority ranking of the risk alternatives and the result is: A3 > A9 > A8 > A4, A6 > A1 > A7 > A5 > A2 (when WASPAS parameter λ = 0); A3 > A9 > A4, A8 > A2 > A6 > A1 > A5, A7 (when WASPAS parameter λ = 1); A3 > A9 > A8 > A4, A6 > A1 > A2 > A5 > A7 (when WASPAS parameter λ = 0.5). In all cases, A3 (Population Displacement) alternative ranks first and is identified as the top most risk prone alternative among all. The risk of displacement of people due to further inundation of land is rising gradually. This has motivated us for assessment of other human risks of the dam in the work.