A Two-Stage AHP and Dempster–Shafer Framework for Screening and Aging Assessment of Irrigation Pump Stations: A Case Study of Fayoum City, Egypt

Pump stations are critical water-management assets in arid irrigation systems, but maintenance planning often separates operational importance from physical condition. This study presents a sequential two-stage Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Dempster–Shafer (D-S) evidence theory framework for screening and aging assessment of pump stations in Fayoum City, Egypt. In the first stage, the AHP results from a previous priority-ranking study are used to identify operationally important pump stations. In the second stage, D-S evidence theory evaluates the physical aging condition of selected high-priority stations under uncertain expert judgment. The Fayoum dataset includes 72 pump stations, distributed as 25 stations under the East Fayoum Irrigation Department, 17 stations under the West Fayoum Irrigation Department, and 30 stations under the Electro Mechanical Department. The D-S stage was applied to five A-ranked stations from the East Fayoum Irrigation Department because field access, expert familiarity, and comparable expert-rating data were available for these stations. Seven experts assessed the stations using six condition-based criteria: comprehensive management, mechanical and electrical equipment, buildings and civil works, overall pump station condition, pipe condition, and gate condition. Expert ratings were transformed into D-S belief masses, combined using Dempster’s rule, and synthesized using normalized criterion weights. The final D-S scores were 50.28 for Al-Tahooun, 50.42 for Ysar Wahba left side, 55.52 for Al-Fallahah, 68.01 for Losato, and 80.44 for Abu Dinqash. Al-Tahooun and Ysar Wahba left side formed the highest-priority intervention group, while Abu Dinqash showed the best condition profile among the assessed stations. The results show that AHP screening followed by D-S condition assessment can support maintenance planning in data-limited irrigation systems, but the conclusions are limited to the five selected East Fayoum stations assessed in the D-S stage.