Use of GIS Technique as Decision Support Tool for Sanitary Landfill Siting

摘要

The primary objective of the study is to apply the Geographical Information System (GIS) as a potential and valuable tool to identify the most suitable locations for a new sanitary landfill replacing the current twelve scattered dumps within the Municipal Union of Al-Koura's villages and towns over the next coming years. Development of the GIS model was driven by the need to establish a scientific, equitable approach to landfill site selection in order to promote public confidence in the scientific basis especially that groundwater currently supplies a significant proportion of the potable water requirements of many towns, and is likely to become a critical resource in the future. Criteria used to determine the most suitable site for landfill in this study have been identified based on the guidelines produced by the Ministry of Environment and some additional constraints. The GIS maps (scale 1: 25,000) of topography, roads, soil, surface and groundwater, geology, buildings, and aerial photo of Al-Koura district were prepared and used for site selection. All of these maps were overlaid to create a suitability map for the landfill site. As for the operating system Windows XP and for the software, the packages ARCGIS 8.2, and ARC VIEW 8.2 were used. The site selection study has identified 6 potential areas for sanitary landfill sites. Based on the criteria, the outlined methodology did produce the expected result and thus the GIS spatial operation using map layers as specified in the constraint criteria works very well using the GIS software in particular the Arc View 8.2. Moreover, as a next step in the process, site reconnaissance to the proposed sites was made. Three additional constraints were applied to narrow the potential land areas such as presence of fault, severe topography and access road. Half of the proposed sites were precluded. As a conclusion, appropriate ranking techniques should then be applied and further work will be necessary to decide the best choices produced by GIS for the final decision especially that the determination of a new landfill site has something to do with political decision, management issues and budget allocation.