Effective planning of resources management is important for facilitating socio-economic development and eco-environmental sustainability. Such a planning effort is complicated with a variety of uncertain, dynamic and nonlinear factors as well as their interactions. In this study, an inexact-stochastic quadratic programming with recourse (ISQP-R) method is developed for reflecting dynamics of system uncertainties based on a complete set of scenarios as well as tackling nonlinearities in the objective function to reflect the effects of marginal utility on system benefits and costs. Moreover, since penalties are exercised with recourse against any infeasibility, the ISQP-R can support the analysis of various policy scenarios that are associated with different levels of economic consequences when the promised targets are violated. The developed method is applied to a case study of planning resources management and developing regional ecological sustainability. The results have been generated and are helpful for decision makers in not only identifying desired resources-allocation strategies but also gaining insight into the tradeoff between economic objective and eco-environment violation risk.

In this study, a dual-interval vertex analysis (DIVA) method is developed, through incorporating the vertex method within an interval-parameter programming framework. The developed DIVA method can tackle uncertainties presented as dual intervals that exist in the objective function and the left- and right-hand sides of the modeling constraints. An interactive algorithm and a vertex analysis approach are proposed for solving the DIVA model. Solutions under an associated a-cut level can be generated by solving a series of deterministic submodels. They can help quantify relationships between the objective function value and the membership grade, which is meaningful for supporting in-depth analyses of tradeoffs between environmental and economic objectives as well as those between system optimality and reliability. A management problem in terms of regional air pollution control is studied to illustrate applicability of the proposed approach. The results indicate that useful solutions for planning the air quality management practices have been generated. They can help decision makers to identify desired pollution-abatement strategies with minimized costs and maximized environmental efficiencies.

In this study, a robust interval-based minimax-regret analysis (RIMA) method is developed and applied to the identification of optimal water-resources-allocation strategies under uncertainty. The developed RIMAapproachcan address uncertainties with multiple presentations.Moreover, it can be usedfor analyzing all possible scenarios associated with different system costs/benefits and risk levels without making assumptions on probabilistic distributions for random variables. In its solution process, an intervalelement cost/benefit matrix can be transformed into an interval-element regret matrix, such that the decision makers can identify desired strategies based on inexact minimax regret (IMMR) criterion. Moreover, the fuzzy decision space is delimited into a more robust one through dimensional enlargement of the original fuzzy constraints. The developed method is applied to a case study of planning water resources allocation under uncertainty. The results indicate that reasonable solutions have been generated. They can help decision makers identify desired strategies for water-resources allocation with a compromise between maximized system benefit and minimized system-failure risk.

In this study, a fuzzy-stochastic-based violation analysis (FSVA) approach is developed for the planning of water resources management systems with uncertain information, based on a multistage fuzzy-stochastic integer programming (FSIP) model. In FSVA, a number of violation variables for the objective and constraints are allowed, such that in-depth analyses of tradeoffs among economic objective, satisfaction degree, and constraint-violation risk can be facilitated. Besides, the developed method can deal with uncertainties expressed as probability distributions and fuzzy sets; it can also reflect the dynamics in terms of decisions for water-allocation and surplus-flow diversion, through transactions at discrete points of a complete scenario set over a multistage context. The developed FSVA method is applied to a case study of water resources management within a multi-stream, multi-reservoir and multi-period context. The results indicate that the satisfaction degrees and system benefits would be different under varied violation levels; moreover, different violation levels can also lead to changed water-allocation and surplus-flow diversion plans. Violation analyses are also conducted to demonstrate that violating different constraints have different effects on system benefit and satisfaction degree.

A hybrid fuzzy-stochastic water-management (FSWM) model is developed for agricultural sustainability under uncertainty, based on advancement of a multistage fuzzy-stochastic quadratic programming (MFSQP) approach. In MFSQP, uncertainties presented in terms of fuzziness and randomness can be incorporated within a multilayer scenario tree, such that revised decisions are permitted in each time period based on the realized values of the uncertain events. Moreover, fuzzy quadratic terms are used in the objective function to minimize the variation of satisfaction degrees among the constraints; it allows an increased flexibility in controlling the system risk in the optimization process. Results of the case study indicate that useful solutions for the planning of agricultural water management have been obtained. In the FSWM model, a number of policies for agricultural water supply are conducted. The results obtained can help decision makers to identify desired water-allocation schemes for agricultural sustainability under uncertainty, particularly when limited water resources are available for multiple competing users.