Application of AHP and TOPSIS Models for Site Selection of Municipal Solid Waste Landfill (Case Study: Lali City)

Selecting an appropriate landfill site is regarded as one of the most complicated and most difficult stages in the solid waste management, since a great number of environmental, technical, economical, social, and cultural factors should be taken into consideration simultaneously. Therefore, this study aimed to select a suitable landfill site for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) of Lali city. AHP and TOPSIS models as well as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used in regard with selecting a landfill site. Six regions were identified as landfills taking 11 criteria into account in AHP model. Then, TOPSIS model was utilized in order to rank the landfills based on their priority. The best landfill site option was selected with considering 8 new criteria which were determined from similar studies, field visits and experts’ ideas. Since AHP was used for weighting and TOPSIS (a multi-criteria decision making method) was applied for ranking the selected options. Finally, option 4 (located in Khaje Abad village) could obtain the first rank and was introduced as the MSW landfill site of Lali city. The study findings revealed that consolidated use of AHP model and TOPSIS model could be perceived as an appropriate method in order to identify the MSW landfill site.