Identifying potential landfill sites using multicriteria evaluation modeling and GIS techniques for Kharagpur city of West Bengal, India

Abstract

Cities are struggling hard to choose an appropriate landfill sites for proper management of municipal solid waste in the context of the massive influx of population in urban areas. Solid waste management emerged as a headache to municipal authority and local government due to the scarcity of suitable lands and strict enforcement laws for waste disposal. An inappropriate selection of landfill sites may have many disadvantageous impacts on the local environment and public healthand facing resistance from political opposition and local community. Multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methods integrated with geographical information systems (GIS) can be an effective tool for the Scientific selection of alternate landfill sites. Kharagpur, one of the main industrial and transportation cities of West Bengal (India), faced a lot of challenges towards waste management due to its increasing urban population. In this study, AHP, Fuzzy AHP, SRS and RSW Weightage methods were adopted to identify identify alternative landfill sites that will be economically cost-effective, ecologically suitable, and acceptable in a public context. Based on Expert guidance, the fourteen most important criteria were carefully selected for weighting in prescribed methods, followed by the weighted linear combination (WLC) used to prepare suitability maps for alternative landfill sites. Landfill suitability maps derived from different MCDM methods are categorized into five classes, namely, highly suitable (S1), Moderately suitable(S2), Suitable(S3), Less suitable(S4), and Unsuitable(S5). Following that, five alternative landfill sites were identified and the resultant outcomes are compared with WASPAS methods; three sites are identified to be more suitable for landfilling to avoid conflicts regarding environmental risk and public health issues. The findings of the present study may be helpful for waste management authorities and urban planners of the city to develop an efficient solid waste management system.