Landfill site selection using GIS based multi criteria evaluation technique. A case study of Srinagar city, India

Abstract Selection of a landfill site in an urban area like Srinagar is a captious issue due to the involvement of multitude of parameters. The decisive parameters are of environmental, economic and social in nature, some of them conflicting, which makes landfill site selection a tedious and complex process. This study focuses on the identification of potential landfill sites in Srinagar city based on Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing; using techniques such as Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Selection of landfill site by the integration of GIS and MCE can be an efficient technique which simultaneously pays attention to all restrictions. GIS has the capability to handle and simulate the necessary constraints while MCE makes it possible to generate and rank the alternatives according to their attractiveness. Five potential sites are identified which fulfil MoEF and CPCB guidelines. Land Suitability Index (LSI) is used to find the extent of suitability of different sites on the basis of environmental considerations while Total Hauling Distance (THD) is used for evaluating sites from economy point of view. The results obtained showed that 98.69% of the study area is restricted. Weights are calculated by AHP using 45 pairwise comparisons with Consistency Ratio equal to 3.2%. Cartographic analysis is performed using ESRI ArcGIS 10.5 software.