Landfill Sites Identification Using GIS and Multi-Criteria Method: A Case Study of Intermediate City of Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Escalation in population over time triggered the abrupt exploitation of natural resources for human survival trough industrialization that ultimately caused splendid increase in the waste generation. This industrial development resulted in the migration of rural community toward urban areas. Management of urban waste is a great challenge for the urban administration. However, technologies have been developed to manage the waste in environmental friendly and sustainable manner. Sanitary landfill sites are one of the latest methods of disposing the municipal solid waste in an environment friendly and sustainable manner. Government and administrative authorities are adopting this technology for the management of urban solid waste. Present study is about identifying landfill sites for the Sahiwal city with an area of 1160 square kilometer and projected population of 1.57 million persons in 2016. Geographical Information System (GIS) is used for the identification of appropriate landfill site (LFS) that can fulfill the need of city in future and is selected based on the sustainable and eco-friendly criteria. The criteria are developed keeping in view the proximity from several land-use features i.e . water bodies, roads, settlements, agricultural land, bare land and existing disposal sites. The weights of the criteria are quantified using pair-wise comparison method in Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The weights are incorporated in GIS spatial data environment and are assigned to proximity threshold of each criterion. Ultimately a map for each criterion is developed highlighting suitable, least suitable, less suitable and un-suitable areas with respect to each specific criterion. These maps are spatially overlaid which result in a final map that identifies most suitable landfill sites for solid waste disposal. The five identified sites are then prioritized based on their distances from the city center and area available. All identified sites are on the bare land and contain considerable buffer from environmentally sensitive receptors.