Combining AHP with GIS for landfill site selection: A case study in the Lake Beyşehir catchment area (Konya, Turkey)
Introduction
In recent years, there has been growing support for the notion of integrated waste management and strategies to reduce waste. Waste materials are first considered for reuse and recycling, and the rest are disposed at landfill sites (Ngoc and Schnitzera, 2009). Municipal and industrial solid waste disposal sites have been the focus of special attention because they are a significant source of soil, water and air contamination. Unfortunately, many sites of waste disposal are uncontrolled; the restrictions imposed by environmental agencies are disregarded, and the rules and techniques for proper landfill management are ignored (Mondelli et al., 2007). The management of municipal solid waste (MSW) is going through a critical phase due to the unavailability of suitable facilities to treat and dispose of the increasing amount of MSW generated in metropolitan cities. Unregulated disposal has negative impacts on all components of environmental and human health (Rathi, 2006, Li’aoa et al., 2009).
In many countries, MSW management focuses on waste collection. While collection helps to remove waste from the generators, collected waste is often disposed of in open dumps without concern for environmental degradation (Von Einsiedel, 2001, Vidanaarachchi et al., 2006). In general, there is a lack of organization and planning in waste management due to insufficient information regarding regulations and financial restrictions endured by developing countries, such as Turkey (Tınmaz and Demir, 2006). Landfills have been used as the most common method for the disposal of solid waste generated by different communities for many years (Komilis et al., 1999, Mutlutürk and Karagüzel, 2007). The selection of landfill sites has targeted areas that are financially efficient and minimize hazards to environmental and public health (Mcbean et al., 1995, Kontos et al., 2005, Yeşilnacar and Çetin, 2007).
The integration of GIS and AHP is a powerful tool to solve the landfill site selection problem (Basağaoğlu et al., 1997, Allen et al., 2003, Sener et al., 2006, Sener et al., 2010). AHP is a systematic decision approach first developed by Saaty (1980) (Bhushan and Rai, 2004). This technique provides a means of decomposing the problem into a hierarchy of sub-problems that can be more easily comprehended and subjectively evaluated. The subjective evaluations are converted into numerical values that are ranked on a numerical scale (Bhushan and Rai, 2004).
Several researchers have used different methods for the site selection process. For example, Kontos et al. (2005) evaluated the suitability of the study region to select an optimal landfill site using a spatial multiple criteria analysis methodology. Vatalis and Manoliadis (2002) overlaid GIS digital maps to find the suitable landfill sites in Western Macedonia, Greece. Siddiqui et al. (1996) combined GIS and AHP for the same goal. According to Mutlutürk and Karagüzel (2007), the site selection method should be applied in two stages. In the first stage, potential landfill sites are identified based on evaluations of geology, hydrogeology and morphological properties using GIS techniques. In the second stage, a number of potential landfill sites are assessed considering various criteria in three fundamental dimensions and plotted on a 3-D graph with axes corresponding to these dimensions. Sener et al. (2006) used GIS and multi-criteria decision analysis to determine appropriate landfill sites. Chang et al. (2008) and Akbari et al. (2008) combined GIS and a convoluted multi-criteria decision-making process to select a landfill site. Nas et al. (2008a) selected an MSW landfill site for Konya, Turkey using GIS and an evaluation of several criteria. Mahini and Gholamalifard (2006) described a multi-criteria evaluation method, called weighted linear combination (WLC), in a GIS environment to evaluate the suitability of the outskirts of Gorgan city (Iran) as a landfill site. Guiqin et al. (2009) used spatial information technologies and AHP for landfill site selection in Beijing, China. In general, the researchers performed their methodology for cities. This study aimed to determine the most appropriate landfill site for the Lake Beyşehir catchment area. GIS techniques, i.e., buffer zoning, neighboring computation, cost distance and overlay analysis, were combined with AHP methods.
Section snippets
The study area
The Lake Beyşehir catchment area covers an area of 4167 km2 and is located within the Lake District in the southwest of Turkey (Fig. 1). Lake Beyşehir, which is the largest freshwater lake and drinking water reservoir in Turkey, is located between 31°17′ and 31°44′ E and 37°34′ and 37°59′ N in Central Anatolia, Turkey. It is one of the most essential water sources, especially for domestic and irrigation water supplies. It covers an area of approximately 656 km2, with an average depth of 5 m
Result and discussion
To determine the suitable areas for landfill sites, AHP was used to assess and evaluate scores based on suitable criteria. Each criterion map was prepared using ArcGIS Spatial Analyst, and prepared maps were converted into Esri Grid Format using weight values obtained from AHP. The final suitability map was derived with the aid of the map calculator function of ArcGIS and overlay analyses of ArcGIS spatial analyst (Fig. 5). After the constrained areas were extracted by masking, the land
Conclusions
Although it is very difficult and expensive to include social, environmental, economical and technical parameters, studies for selecting the sites for solid waste disposal should be performed for every city in Turkey. To determine an appropriate landfill site, GIS is a very powerful tool that can provide a rapid assessment of the study area. In this study, landfill site selection was performed with the aid of GIS and AHP techniques. GIS was used to prepare spatial statistics and clustering
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