Principal component analysis for decision support in integrated water management

A general methodology for holistic sustainability assessment of measures in integrated water management based on principal component analysis (PCA) was developed. Application on data from three cases demonstrated that PCA could be used to rank alternatives, assess differences between groups of alternatives and the main properties responsible for this, and account for the impacts of measures on different dimensions of sustainability. The results demonstrated the general applicability of the method. For all cases a combination of measures/options yielded the most sustainable solution. The absence of a single clearly most optimal solution highlights the need for a transparent and systematic analysis, which can be obtained with the presented methodology.