SELECTION OF WASTE DISPOSAL SITES USING GIS1

ABSTRACT: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology is used to identify candidate sites for a solid waste disposal facility in the Gölbasi region of Turkey that has suffered from the negative impact of a current but poorly-located open-dump site on the environment. The municipality of Gölbasi has noticed its deleterious effect on the environment, and has thus decided to dismiss this open-dump site and search for new landfill sites. In this study, the procedure followed under a GIS framework rejects the unacceptable sites considering environmental factors exclusively, other than economic and political issues, contained in the form of multiple layers of attribute information to select the candidate sites for landfilling wastes through an overlay analysis performed by GIS software, ARC/INFO V 7.1. For the spatial data requirements of GIS, a number of thematic map layers (ground water, wetlands and swamp areas, surface water, roads, topographic contours, ecological features, settlements, erosion susceptibility zones, and soil type) are prepared in digital form. In this application, GIS is considered as a screening tool in a site selection process to narrow the number of candidate sites, subsequently leading to one or more sites for detailed investigation. Preliminary ranking for a group of potential sites is done on the basis of simple calculations coupled with on-site field studies.