Comprehensive Review of the Landfill Site Selection Methodologies and Criteria

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the methodological frameworks and criteria used for municipal solid waste landfill selection. The review is based on 89 scientific papers published in peer reviewed journals from 1983 onwards. The descriptive statistical analyses of the reviewed papers consider temporal, location-based quantitative, and qualitative factors. The papers considered are classified by the country where the case studies were carried out, and the qualitative ranking is performed according to the number of citations. Afterwards, the employed methods and criteria for landfill site selection were extensively analyzed and classified. The summary of the conducted analyses shows that Geographical Information Systems (GIS), either as an individual technique or in combination with other approaches are extensively used. Weighted linear combination is the most frequently applied multi-criteria decision analysis method for ranking of alternatives. The analytical hierarchy process is the dominating method for weighting the criteria. A combination of GIS with Remote Sensing techniques is used in several landfill siting studies as a more appealing approach, due to the capability of real-time data updates. The evaluations of the landfill siting criteria indicate that the most frequent main criterion is environmental, followed by economic and social criteria, while the most preferred sub-criteria is distance to the surface waters. These findings and classifications are beneficial to both, the researchers and decision makers, while serving as a support to the complex and difficult process of real-world landfill site selection.