Landfill Site Selection by using GIS and Multicriteria Decision Analysis

Abstract

Many developing countries are struggling to provide a proper waste management system due to increasing population and urbanization. Also, waste management system is not regulated sufficiently in Turkey. At present, there are various techniques used for solid waste management such as landfill, thermal treatment, biological treatment, recycling etc. The landfill is the most common mode for the disposal of solid waste. But, landfill site selection is quite complex process and it depends on several criteria and regulations. In this study landfill site selection is performed by using Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MDA) and Geographic Information System (GIS) for the Beysehir Lake catchment area. The Beysehir Lake is the largest freshwater lake and drinking water reservoir in Turkey but there isn't sanitary landfill site in the basin. Hence, the appropriate landfill site should be selected in point of water quality in the Beysehir Lake. In order to determine landfill site several criteria were examined such as distance from settlements, distance from surface waters, distance from protected areas (ecologic, scientific or historic), geology/hydrogeology, landuse, distance from roads, slope and aspect. The MDA was used to measure the relative importance weighting for each criterion. Each map layers were formed with the aid of GIS and final suitability map was created by overlay analyses of each criterion map. According to obtained results, high, moderate, low and very low suitable areas were determined which have rate of 6.1 %, 20.75 %, 13.40 % and 25.37 %, respectively. Also, the percentage of the forbidden area was determined as 34.38 %.