Multi-criteria evaluation of water poverty index spatial variations in some watersheds of Ardabil Province

Water resources scarcity is one of the biggest multidimensional issue of current century that could be the source of many positive and negative aspects of developments.The need for a comprehensive and multi-dimensional indicators to assess the condition and to predict the future status of surface water resources has become increasingly important. To this end, Water Poverty Index(WPI) is proposed to assess the availability of water resources.In this study, the amount of WPI, taking into account the resources, access, cost, environmental and socio-economic capacity criteria were calculated in Ardabil Province subwatersheds. Then, the different weighting approaches (equal weight to all criteria and one-at-a-time emphasizing on different criteria), were used to examine the WPI values and the sub-watersheds of the study area were ranked in terms of water poverty degree. The results showed that the values of water poverty index ranges from 22 to 65, acording to the different weighting approached in the study area.Considering equally weighted Water Poverty Index, the Shamsabad watershed had a higher water poverty index (29), while the Polesoltan watershed had the best condition with respect to water poverty condition compared to other watershed in the Ardabil Province.