Alternative risk measure for decision-making under uncertainty in water management

Taking into account uncertainties in water management remains a challenge due to social, economic and environmental changes. Often, uncertainty creates difficulty in ranking or comparing multiple water management options, possibly leading to a wrong decision. In this paper, an alternative risk measure is proposed to facilitate the ranking or comparison of water management options under uncertainty by using the concepts of conditional expected loss and partial mean. This measure has the advantages of being more intuitive, general and could relate to many other measures of risk in literature. The application of the risk measure is demonstrated through a case study for the evaluation of flood mitigation projects. The results show that the new measure is applicable to a general decision-making process under uncertainty.