An example on the use of VIKOR method in water quality studies: boğacik creek (Giresun)

In recent years, the importance of sustainable usage of natural resources without harming their existence has become more comprehensible with the environmental disasters experienced. Particularly, the socio-economic problems caused by the widespread effect of deterioration in aquatic ecosystems pave the way for studies in this field. In monitoring studies carried out in aquatic ecosystems, main problems have confronted as a complex system of many demonstrable elements such as high economic cost, lack of database, standards addressed in the assessments and differences between expert comments. In such cases, VIKOR method is used as a useful method in multi-criteria decision making, especially when the decision makers cannot make a choice or explain their preferences. In this study, for the first time in our country, the VIKOR Method, which is proposed for multi-criteria optimization of complex systems, was applied to set an example for station selection that has a key role in the evaluation of a freshwater resource. In the analyzes, physicochemical variables that are monitored for 12 months from Boğacık Creek were used as data. As a result of the evaluation of the obtained data with advanced statistical analysis, weight coefficients based on quantitative results rather than expert opinion were calculated for the first time and analyzed by using 15 physicochemical variables as criteria. The role of physicochemical variables obtained from 3 different regions of Boğacık Creek in determining the best station is whether the relevant variable has minimum or maximum characteristics. As a result, it can be said that the best station point should be the first and second station points.