Sanitary landfill site selection by using Geographic Information System
Landfilling is one of the most common methods for disposal of municipal solid waste. Government regulations for pollution control and public opposition due to unacceptable conditions makes it extremely difficult for planner to find a new landfill site. Geographic information system (GIS) and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) can be applied successfully in such situations considering various technical, environmental, economic, regulative, and social factors. This paper intends to report a methodology and application of GIS for the sanitary landfill site selection taking a case study of Varanasi city (India). Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) has been used to give weights to different factors based on expert opinion. The factors were aggregated using weighted linear combination (WLC) technique in GIS environment using QGIS software. The results indicate that there are at least four locations where adequate land seems available and the sites are under “Best suitable” category for municipal solid waste landfilling. It is found that GIS based multicriteria decision analysis can be a powerful tool for such applications.