ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Study on River Health Assessment
Weight Calculation
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1
College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
2
College of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, Zhejiang University of Water Resources
and Electrical Power, Hangzhou, China
3
Power China Huadong Engineering Corporation Limited, Hangzhou, China
4
Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
Submission date: 2019-03-26
Final revision date: 2019-06-10
Acceptance date: 2019-06-14
Online publication date: 2020-01-31
Publication date: 2020-02-13
Corresponding author
Chengju Shan
Zhejiang University of Water Resources and Electric Power, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2020;29(2):1839-1848
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ABSTRACT
Weight calculation plays an important role in river health assessment. There are two main classes of
methods for determining index weights: subjective weight-assignment methods and objective weightassignment
methods. Both types of methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. Subjective
weight-assignment methods reflect the intention of decision makers with certain subjectivity. Objective
weight-assignment methods mainly rely on complete mathematical theories and methods and tend to
ignore the subjective information of the decision makers; thus, they do not consider the differences
among index. Both methods have deficiencies. To make the calculation of index weights more rational,
this study introduces a combined weight-assignment idea based on game theory. This method combines
a subjective weight-assignment method (analytic hierarchy process) with an objective weight-assignment
method (entropy method) to calculate the weight, which avoids the subjectivity of subjective weightassignment
methods and the absolute objectivity of the objective weight-assignment methods. The
Luanhe River in the Haihe River Basin was selected as the study area, and the weight of the health
evaluation index system of the Luanhe River was calculated using the combined weight-assignment
method to assess the degree of influence of each index on river health. The research shows that using this
method to calculate the weight has important practical applications for river health assessment.