Siting MSW landfills using MCE methodology in GIS environment (Case study: Birjand plain, Iran)

The rapid municipal solid waste growth of Birjand plain causes to find an appropriate site selection for the landfill. In order to reduce the negative impacts of waste, the use of novel tools and technologies to gain a suitable site for landfill seems imperative. The present paper aimed to exhibits the Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE) for the landfill site selection of the Birjand plain because till date a suitable action has not been implicated. In the present research, the parameters such as environmental and socio-economical factors have been used. The factors like slope, water resources, soil parameters, landuse, fault and protected areas in the model of effective environmental criteria and the factors viz. distance from road, urban areas, village, airport, historical place, and industries in the model of socio-economic criteria were investigated and with the use of Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) and Analytical Network Process (ANP) models were compounded and according to the Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) and Fuzzy Linguistic Quantifier (LQ) were aggregated. The paper focuses on the OWA method as well as an approach for integrating Geographic Information System (GIS) and OWA. OWA has been developed as a generalization of multi-criteria combination. In this study we attained comparable data via the technique of ANP and five scenarios of OWA method were used. The results of field studies, fifth scenario for the study area proposed. Based on the research findings, OWA method had a great potential and flexibility in the modeling of the complex decision-making problems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.