Desalination technologies strategic roadmap for California

As the world's population and water-intensive industries grow, demands for global fresh water and energy resources will increase. The current supply of conventional water resources may be insufficient to meet the future water demands of California. It will be necessary to rely more on desalination. This research is a strategic management and technological assessment research study. The desalination technologies strategic roadmap will be considered from a short-term perspective (1--10 years from now) and a long-term perspective (11 years and more) by utilizing desalination technologies in order to increase California's fresh water supply and solve local water shortages problems. The research addresses several candidate desalination technologies. The objective of the research is to examine the different candidate desalination technologies in three interrelated dimensions. The dimensions to be examined are technological, market acceptance, and environmental dimensions, using ratings based on expert questionnaires. This research also utilizes an analytical hierarchy process model that effectively ranks the right technologies within two time periods. The results of the survey indicate that the most important criteria for selecting desalination technologies, (1--10 years from now) and (11 years and more) are economic returns. With respect to six different criteria the most preferred desalination technology for California is reverse osmosis for both time periods.