Prevention of landfill pollution by multicriteria spatial decision support systems (MC-SDSS): development, implementation, and case study

Abstract

Landfilling of municipal solid waste (MSW) is one of the serious environmental concerns as improper location of MSW landfill site can release the pollutants into the surrounding environment. The process of selecting MSW landfill site is a complicated decision making problem since it is subjected to simultaneous assessment of several environmental criteria, rules, and restrictions besides sociocultural and economic ones. The current study suggests a framework based on Multicriteria spatial decision support systems (MC-SDSS) to select landfill site. The MC-SDSS is an advanced method to integrate multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and geographical information systems (GIS) techniques. This approach enables the incorporation of several conflicting objectives and preferences into spatial decision models. In this study, 14 criteria were chosen and then divided into environmental, sociocultural, and economic categories. Finally, suitability maps were generated based on the MC-SDSS analysis. The developed method was implemented in a real case study in Arak city in northwestern region of Iran, which is environmentally sensitive area. The suitability maps of the case study in Arak showed that 10% (391 km²) is least suitable area, 23% (942 km²) is low suitable, 37% (1507 km²) is moderate suitable, 19% (783 km²) is suitable, and 11% (489 km²) is most suitable locations for landfill site, and finally, three best alternative sites were introduced for the final landfill site.