Municipal wastewater management is an essential component in public infrastructure planning and environmental sustainability. Although Turkey has increased wastewater treatment services in recent years, there remain significant differences between provinces in access to treatment, capacity for advanced treatment, and the volume of untreated wastewater. In this study, an integrated Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) framework is proposed to evaluate the performance of municipal wastewater management of Turkish provinces using provincial level data retrieved from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK). The weights of objective criteria were determined by applying the CRITIC method and the performance levels of the provinces were ranked by using the TOPSIS, MARCOS and CoCoSo methods. To have a more comprehensive evaluation perspective, an integrated ranking structure based on average ranking scores was also developed. Furthermore, the consistency among the MCDM methods was verified by Spearman rank correlation analysis. The results show that the advanced treatment ratio is the most important evaluation indicator in the provincial wastewater management performance assessment. Performance levels were relatively high in provinces such as Kilis, İzmir, Kocaeli and Tekirdağ while Muş, Aksaray and Şanlıurfa showed relatively weaker performance. The correlation analysis showed a high level of consistency between the applied MCDM methods confirming the reliability of the ranking structure. The study provides a multidimensional assessment framework for municipal wastewater management and practical suggestions for environmental infrastructure investments, regional planning and sustainable wastewater management policies in Türkiye.

Keywords

Wastewater management; CRITIC; TOPSIS; MARCOS; CoCoSo.