MODELING LANDFILL SUITABILITY BASED ON MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING METHOD

Abstract

Despite great efforts to reduce and recycle solid waste, landfill disposal is still the
most preferable method of solid waste management. One major problem, however, concerns
selecting an appropriate landfill site. This research aims to develop a landfill siting methodology
employing GIS, and a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) rule, consisting of analytical
hierarchy processes (AHP) and weighted linear combinations (WLC). The proposed method was
applied to the study area of the District of Klang, Selangor, Malaysia. Through this study, a few
potential sites for a new landfill facility were identified by considering the various environmental,
social and economic factors. The GIS is used for inputting, managing and visualizing the
geographic data, while the AHP and WLC methods are employed for analyzing the data, to
determine weights for the criteria, and to rank potential areas based on their suitability for landfill
siting, according to suitability index (SI) values. Application of the presented method indicated 5
potential sites for landfill with SI values ranging from 2.67 to 4.00. The results show that the use
of GIS along with the MCDM method provides a very useful decision support system for policy
makers in solid waste management issues.