SELECTION OF THE APPROPRIATE AGGREGATION FUNCTION FOR LANDFILL AIR POLLUTION INDEX

摘要

An index, Landfill Air pollution potential Index (LAPI), to compare and quantify the ambient air pollution potential of Municipal Landfills was developed. The LAPI is a quantitative tool by which the air pollution data of the landfill sites can be reported uniformly. It is an increasing scale index and has been formulated based on the Delphi technique. The formulation process involved selection of variables, derivation of weights; formulation of their sub indices equations or curves; and aggregation of the sub indices to arrive at the LAPI. The aggregation function is one of the most important steps in calculating any environmental index. If the aggregation function is ambiguous, the result will raise an unnecessary alarm, indicating a comparatively less polluted environmental situation as more contaminated. Similarly, if the aggregation function is eclipsed, a false sense of security may be created, indicating a highly polluted environmental situation as less polluted. In this paper, the concept of LAPI and the various possible aggregation functions are described and used to calculate LAPI values to select the most appropriate aggregation function. Based on the results, it is concluded that the weighted linear sum aggregation function is the best possible function for calculating LAPI. Sensitivity analysis of the six short -listed aggregation function is performed to substantiate the conclusion.