Fair Budgeting Formulation for O&M of Irrigation Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: WA and AHP Methods

Abstract

Operation and Maintenance (O&M) budget provided by the Government of Indonesia for irrigation, so far, is based on the size of irrigated area only. Meanwhile, the actual O&M costs of an irrigation area also depend on the topographic terrain, canal density/length, irrigation structure density, and infrastructure damages that influence to the proper function of irrigation system. Thus, the O&M budget does not represent the actual cost needed. The purpose of this study is to find method for fair budgeting O&M irrigations based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA): Weighted Average (WA) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods. As case study, the methods are applied on nine irrigation areas with various topographical conditions. The results are then compared with the conventional O&M budget. Four criteria are used to assess the irrigation areas above: canal density/length (m/ha), structure density (per hectare), infrastructure damages (%), and size of the irrigation area. The result shows that O&M budgeting using WA and AHP methods gives more fairness and closer to the actual budget needed, compared with the government budgeting that based on the size of irrigation area only. While in general, result using AHP method tends to be more sensitive than that using WA method.

Keywords

• fair budgeting
• irrigation o&m
• mcda
• ahp