Scenario Neutral Based Multilateral Decision-Making Framework for Drought Management

Drought, defined by an imbalance between water supply and demand resulting from both natural and human-induced factors, necessitates the adoption of robust water management practices. These practices must account not only for potential inflows but also for demand conditions and opportunities for collaboration with nearby water facilities to ensure a reliable water supply. This study introduces a Scenario-Neutral Multilateral Decision-Making framework that addresses the impacts of demand and inter-agency collaboration on water facilities. It further explores how different operational policies influence end users, enabling an analysis of the equity and effectiveness of these operations. Three operational policies, derived from distinct objective functions, were compared across various scenarios for a pilot basin. The basin average reliability was found to be sensitive to both climate and demand conditions, whereas net profit exhibited a greater responsiveness to climate variations. Through inter-agency cooperation, the overall water supply reliability of the basin is anticipated to improve by 5–10%.