Geographical information systems (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) integration for sustainable landfill site selection considering dynamic data source

Abstract

Landfill site selection is complex task in which many different factors need to be considered. The aim of this study is to identify suitable landfill sites for a 35-year period using a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). If an analysis is carried out to resolve a problem as it exists today, then the same problem will recur in the years to come due to changes in the input parameters. Future prospections should always be considered when using GIS with MCDA for the creation of mid- and/or long-term solutions. To assess the proposed approach, the city of Antalya was chosen for study, being the city with the highest population growth in Turkey. Twelve available parameters (i.e., digital elevation model, aspect, slope, temperature, precipitation, earthquake zones, distance to road, visibility from roads, distance to population density, geology, landslide density, and distance to fault lines), prepared through a series of GIS analyses, were used to carry out a landfill site selection. The weights of the parameters were obtained from a constructed Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) matrix, and the consistency index and the consistency ratio were recorded as 0.091 and 0.062, respectively. For the study, protection zones were omitted. The analysis revealed a number of potential landfill sites. Furthermore, the volume of solid waste for the next 35-year period was calculated using dynamic population data, and possible candidate sites for landfill were generated. The proposed approach can serve as a guide for future works.