A bibliometric analysis on the use of the multicriteria approach to the water resource management

Abstract: The purpose of this article was to accomplish a literature review to analyze the scientific studies which were based on Multicriteria Methods to study water resources management in agriculture. Scientific production indicators were established for the subject, through a descriptive analysis of 519 publications data set generated by the Scopus database search engine. The publications were refined applying several criteria resulting in 30 articles considered to be the most important to interpret the factors that detail the researched topic. The analyzed scientific studies also show that the structuring of multicriteria models is designed to better understand the problem or the process of decision making rather than to make the decisions itself. Furthermore, to the water resources management field, they provide a way to discuss and deal with problems like water distribution and pollution. An aggregating function along with a compensatory approach is used in most publications. Although participatory techniques were not the approach used by most studies, its potential was recognized for dealing with problems such as water management resources.