Municipal Solid Waste Disposal Site Selection Using Remote Sensing Technology and AHP Process (Case Study: Khesht city, Fars Province, Iran)

Abstract

The design and implementation of the municipal waste management system aim to solve the urban issues and ultimately contribute to the citizens' health and welfare. The first step in this system is to select a site for the safe disposal of wastes. This survey aimed to select the most suitable landfill site for municipal solid waste using the geographic information system (GIS) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model following the environmental, economic, and engineering criteria. Therefore, by reviewing the literature and backgrounds, the parameters required for locating the landfill site were extracted, and the most important ones (15 sub-criteria) were selected and divided into four groups. The results showed that the sub-criterion of distance to the river with the weight of 0.218 was identified as the most critical parameter, followed by groundwater depth. In this way, the flooding parameter with the weight of 0.010 was considered the least important variable. In addition, it was found that the moderate suitability class with 50% of the area had the highest area, and the very high suitability with 0.8% had the lowest area. The inconsistency rate was equal to 0.04, which illustrates the high consistency of matrices. Then, the overlaying was carried out, and three sites were determined as the best place for a landfill in Khesht county.