AHP provides a comprehensive framework to structure a decision problem, represent and quantify decision criteria, relate these criteria to overall goals, and then evaluate alternative Decision Support for Water Resources Management: SD and AHP plans through pair-wise comparisons. The application of AHP mainly consists of four steps: 1) set up a decision hierarchy by breaking down the decision problem into goal, criteria, subcriteria, and decision alternatives; 2) collect input data for pair-wise comparisons of the decision elements; 3) use the eigenvalue method to estimate the relative weights of the decision
elements, and determine the consistency of the judgements; 4) aggregate the relative weights of the decision elements to rank the decision alternatives. For more details about the method, please refer to Saaty.