Setting priorities for management of hydraulic structures in mountanious catchments

Trained citizen-volunteers can support civil protection and technical services to inspect the functional status of hydraulic structures. Volunteers carry out first level inspections of bridges and check dams by compiling standardised forms while looking the following parameters: A) Condition of the structure, B) Level of obstruction at the structure and C) Presence of protection works and erosion level in the stream bank. The aim of this work is to support technicians on the evaluation of volunteers' inspections. The output are indexes at parameter level on the functional status of the inspected structure. To that end, this research presents the definition and design of a decision support methodology to be implemented as web-based tool. Technicians evaluate volunteers' inspections at parameter level. First, technicians assign weights to the components questions of the inspection form assisted by the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). From available volunteers' inspections, volunteer ratings are systematically converted into rating scores using fuzzy logic theory. Finally, we used the multi-criteria TOPSIS method to aggregate the weighted-rating scores into indexes for the functional status of the structure. Based on those indexes, technicians can set priorities on the management of hydraulic structures. We established the user requirements based on a case study in the Fella Basin, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region, Italy. Future research will test the conceptual design with actual technicians of the region for improving the methodology and the functional requirements of the web-based tool.