Abstract
Landfill siting is a complex process. It is one of the major problems in waste management, where many factors should be taken into consideration when selecting a suitable site for landfill in any given area. At the present time, there are many random waste disposal sites distributed throughout Al-Hashimiyah Qadhaa in Iraq. In this study, the Geographic Information System (GIS) and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were used to select the best sites for landfill. The process of selecting sites for landfill in Al-Hashimiyah Qadhaa comprised two steps. First, fifteen different criteria were mapped and incorporated into overlay analyses within GIS software to produce the final suitability index map for the site. The second step comprises the exclusion of unsuitable areas from the final map to simplify identification of the candidate sites for landfill in the study area. The weightings of criteria were identified using AHP, and the weightings of the sub-criteria of each criterion were determined based on multiple factors. In order to accommodate solid waste from 2020 until 2030, two suitable candidate landfill sites were determined which fulfill the required area of 1.013 km2 with areas of 1.374 km2 and 1.288 km2 respectively.
Highlights
Solid waste management is considered a major issue for the municipality directorates in the cities of developing countries
The process of selecting a landfill site comprises many steps that need to be performed using Geographic Information System (GIS) software: (1) The area of each criterion map is divided into categories to suit the requirements, and each category is given a suitable weighting; (2) Determining the final map for landfill siting using the special analysis tool in GIS “Map Algebra—Single Output Map Algebra”; (3) Exclusion of unsuitable areas for sites for landfill with some of their buffer zones to simplify the process of selecting candidate sites for landfill [12,14]
The features of these areas were entered into GIS as separate shapefiles, and they were merged into a single shapefile using the button of merge in “Editor” option within the GIS software or using the special extension tool map algebra syntax (Merge “grid, ..., grid”)
Summary
Solid waste management is considered a major issue for the municipality directorates in the cities of developing countries. The GIS software (version 10.4) plays a significance role in contributing to overlay analysis for the selection of a landfill site because it has a high ability to manage large volumes of spatial data and consider many factors from a variety of sources [4,12,13,14]. The main goal of this study is to select the most suitable candidate sites for landfill in Al-Hashimiyah Qadhaa, Iraq, that fulfill the environmental and scientific criteria. For achieving this goal significant criterion that can affect the environment were considered through combining the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method and GIS software. The process of selecting a landfill site comprises many steps that need to be performed using GIS software: (1) The area of each criterion map is divided into categories to suit the requirements, and each category is given a suitable weighting; (2) Determining the final map for landfill siting using the special analysis tool in GIS “Map Algebra—Single Output Map Algebra”; (3) Exclusion of unsuitable areas for sites for landfill with some of their buffer zones to simplify the process of selecting candidate sites for landfill [12,14]
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