Abstract
The government authorities in developing countries are awfully concerned with coping out the problems of the rising issues related to the disposal of solid wastes. Most of the Indian cities still dispose of solid waste unscientifically causing to severe environmental as well as public health problems. Geographic information systems (GIS) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) have emerged as efficient tools for multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) in effective solutions of solid waste management. The present study focuses on the integration of GIS and AHP in identifying potential sanitary landfill areas for solid waste disposal in Durgapur city, West Bengal, India. Eleven criteria were selected viz. land elevation, slope, soil, geology, land use land cover, distance to surface water, distance to tube wells, distance to roads, distance to industrial belts, distance to sensitive places, and land cost. All the criteria were aggregated using weighted overlay analysis in GIS environment. The study identified three potential landfill areas for MSW disposal covering the areas of 13.83854, 33.80678, and 27.20085 ha, respectively, in Durgapur city. The result found that land cost value was the most significant criterion in the model with a weight of 0.25258. Followed by land cost value, sensitive places and roads were the second and third most important criteria with a weight value of 0.1409 and 0.1233, respectively.
Highlights
By World Population Clock, 2020, India is the second most populated country in the world having a population of more than 137 cores, accounting for 17.7% of the world’s total population, and 35.0% of the total Indian is living in the urban areas
Based on the selected criteria such as geology, soil, tube wells & wells, land-use land cover, surface water bodies, roads, land cost value, industrial belts, sensitive places, slope and elevation, three candidate sites have been chosen for solid waste landfill in the study area due to highest landfill suitability analyzed by the Geographic information systems (GIS) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques
GIS-based site suitability model discussed in the current study will help the researchers, town planners, decision makers, civil engineers and government authorities to identify optimal sites for scientific landfill to maintain the sustainability of waste management and to protect the public health from ambient air, contamination of water, foul smells and toxic gasses released from burning waste
Summary
By World Population Clock, 2020, India is the second most populated country in the world having a population of more than 137 cores, accounting for 17.7% of the world’s total population, and 35.0% of the total Indian is living in the urban areas. Establishment of the solid waste landfill is a tedious errand as it may adversely impact on the country’s economy, ecology, and environmental health, if an unsuitable site is selected without considering any decision-making process (Chang et al 2008; Che et al 2013). Many factors such as environmental, political and legislations are integrated into landfill siting decisions, and geographic information system (GIS) is an ideal tool to administer bulky volumes of spatial data from different sources (Peuquet and Marble 1990; Klosterman 1995; Savage et al 1998; Yaakup et al 2004; Nas et al 2010; Chandio et al 2012), because it has the capability to store, retrieve, analysis and demonstrations of data as per the requirement of the users (Malczewski 2006; Mat et al 2016). The Arc GIS acts as a platform to overlay the multiple factors to provide a composite map which is considered as a best-fitted land for any development (Chandio et al 2012)
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