Prioritizing suitable locations for underground dam construction in south‑east of Bushehr Province

Abstract

The solutions to deal with the water crisis are summarized into two strategies for managing water resources and extraction of new sources of water. In Iran, due to geographical and climatic conditions, water resources management has a high priority. One of the methods to control and store water in wet periods for using in dry periods is construction of underground dams. The most important problem in the development and creation of underground dams is the complexity of determining suitable areas for the dams. The study area has been confronted with critical water condition due to improper temporal and spatial distribution of rainfall, uncontrolled abstraction of groundwater, drop in groundwater level and interference of saline and fresh water. Therefore, the construction of underground dams can be a practical solution to prevent groundwater levels from falling, land use change, and gradual groundwater salinity. The present study was conducted to fnd the underground dams using Boolean logic and for priority of underground dam sites using MCDM methods including AHP, ANP, VIKOR, TOPSIS and ELECTRE III in four counties of Bushehr, Tangestan, Dashti, and Jam in southern Iran. The results obtained by Boolean logic showed that the 305 km2 of the studied site has potential for underground dam construction. In the next step, according to Google Earth images and based on diferent indices including axial length, reservoir, lithology and distance from village and roads, 23 potential axes were identifed afterward, by extensive feld surveys. Among these 23 potential axes, 6 locations were identifed as suitable. To prioritize these six areas, the MCDM models were used. Finally, the results of the MCDM models showed that the sites have diferent ranks of 1–6 for constructing underground dams. Based on the rank from the Copeland method, Zayer Abbasi and Faghih Hasenan sites achieved the frst and the last (sixth) priority, respectively.