Land Suitability Analysis in Locating Compost Production Centers ‎‎(Case Study: Fars Province)‎

Today, one of the most significant health and environmental problems in cities is the ascending trend of solid wastes. To overcome this problem, it must be managed and turned into institutionalization of phenomena such as recycling, compost production, energy recovery and biogas from solid urban wastes. By considering more than 65 percent of organic wastes in Fars province represents the need for investment in the compost production sector. The process of determining spatial desirability for the establishment of composting units requires the consideration of multiple criteria, which makes the use of multi-criteria analysis models and techniques inevitable. Accordingly, due to the nature of multi criteria status in the noted problem, in this paper, by choosing Fars province as a case study and using 18 criteria that has been weighted, evaluated and standardized, we have tried to test the application of TOPSIS model in the experimental field of research and the resulting output has been presented in the form of classified spatial suitability of land for the deployment of composting units. Accordingly, as much as the pixel values represent a lower number, the pixel desirability is reduced. In the output map, each pixel with the score closer to 1 indicates the preferred pixel conditions for the establishment of the compost production unit, which is proportional to the need to allocate land to a given site within a specified range and subject to the constraints of the relevant limitation which can be a guide for decision makers to locate composting units.