Utilizing GIS linked to AHP for landfill site selection in Rudbar County of Iran

Abstract

As landfill site selection is complicated action and needs attention to various local and non-local conditions such as social, economic, technical and environmental issues; it will require an applicable method, which is able to make proper connection between aforementioned conditions to help engineers in making the most appropriate decision about landfill site. The present study has used a mixture of GIS and multi criteria decision making system in context of the AHP method. So that site selection and prioritization of areas prone to construction of landfill were carried on at 3 stages according to violent morphological and often mountainous (Rudbar County) conditions. At the first stage, after collation of maps based on restriction criteria, improper areas for constructing the landfill were removed. At the second stage, by considering the dominant wind direction and proper area for landfill in a 20-year-old interval, those zones that their areas were more than 35 ha and were not located in the dominant wind direction, were identified as prone areas for constructing the landfill. At the last stage, among the selected areas, they were evaluated and compared by using hierarchical analysis, common standards and experts’ comments. Eventually, the prioritization of prone areas was done based on qualitative classification: excellent, very good, good, average, and weak were different ranks in terms of suitability for constructing landfill. Based on obtained results, 0.41% of understudied regions were classified as weak areas, 0.89% was average, 1.07% was good, 0.70% was very good, and 0.76% was grouped in excellent class.