Multi Criteria Decision-Making Methods to Analyze the Caspian Sea Negotiation

The objective of this study is to identify the best option for sharing the resources of the caspian sea, from the proposed options by the game theory and bankruptcy methods. since 1993, negotiations have been going on among five littoral states of the caspian sea: azerbaijan, iran, kazakhstan, russia, and turkmenistan over how to share the resources of the surface and seabed of the caspian sea. six different multi-criteria decision-making (mcdm) methods are applied here to identify the best option for sharing the oil and gas resources of the caspian sea, from the proposed options by the game theory (nash, shapely, nucleolus and -value) and bankruptcy (proportional, constrained equal award and adjusted proportional) methods. results of the application of six different mcdm to the problem suggest the nash and shapely (applied to both sea surface and seabed) as the best solution for sharing the oil and gas resources of the caspian sea. due to limitations of the study in considering the economic, military, and political powers of the negotiation parties in determining the best option, further studies are required to verify the results obtained in this paper.