Hazardous Waste Landfill Siting using GIS Technique and Analytical Hierarchy Process

Abstract

Disposal of large amount of generated hazardous waste in power plants, has always received communities' and authori¬ties attentions. In this paper using site screening method and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) a sophisticated approach for siting hazardous waste landfill in large areas is presented. This approach demonstrates how the evaluation criteria such as physical, socio-economical, technical, environmental and their regulatory sub criteria can be introduced into an over layer technique to screen some limited appropriate zones in the area. Then, in order to find the optimal site amongst the primary screened site utilizing a Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method for hierarchy computations of the process is recommended. Using the introduced method an accurate siting procedure for environmental planning of the landfills in an area would be enabled. In the study this approach was utilized for disposal of hazardous wastes of Shahid Rajaee thermal power plant located in Qazvin province west central part of Iran. As a result of this study 10 suitable zones were screened in the area at first, then using analytical hierarchy process a site near the power plant were chosen as the optimal site for landfilling of the hazardous wastes in Qazvin province.

Keywords

• Landfill siting
• priority processing
• hazardous waste
• power plant