Industrial Waste Disposal Site Selection using Fuzzy-AHP Model in Salafchegan Special Economic Zone

Growth and development of the city and the urbanization, always has been accompanied with the development and human activities. On one hand, this companionship and coexistence has created the possibility of occupation and economic capabilities for citizens, but on the other hand, they expose environment to pollution of air, water, soil, noise and visual and chemical pollutions. One of the environmental problems of the country is management of wastes especially industrial wastes. Among the important issues in the overall approach to comprehensive management of industrial wastes is the necessity of proper site selection for disposal. Considering the effects that waste disposal sites exert on the ecosystem and their surroundings, it should be noted that the site of disposal should be located where it develops the minimum destructive effects and inappropriate impact on their surroundings.
The purpose of this study is the industrial waste site selection in the special economic zone of Salafcheghan. This area, as the most important and nearest special economic zone to the economical-political center of the country, with unique and privileged position to production, export and transit of goods, can play an important role in the macroeconomic of the country. Different parameters are effective on the industrial waste site selection. In this research, parameters such as groundwater depth, distance from surface water and groundwater, access ways, residential areas, Industries, power transmission lines, flooding, faults, slope and distance from the orchards and agricultural lands were studied.
In recent years, Arc GIS software has developed an undeniable transformation in the arena of study on geographical resources. Application of GIS science and technology in the studies related to industrial waste disposal sites can highly accelerate the preparation and combination of different data layers in the form of different conceptual models. Given the type of combination theory, in these models the number of data layers and value of each layer in the combination will be different. Some of these models are such as Boolean logic model, weights of evidence, index overlay, fuzzy logic, and weighted linear combination. The combination of fuzzy logic and AHP method was used for site selection of industrial waste disposal, so this operation caused to increase of model's accuracy and reliability of results.
Following selection and preparation of the maps related to the influential parameters, giving weights was done through AHP and using expert comments. according to the effective factors and their AHP weights, maps of membership functions of each factor were prepared and fuzzy overlay was conducted by using And operator.
Thus, completely unsuitable to completely suitable areas were determined for industrial waste disposal in Salafchegan district of Qom province. These results also using satellite images were verified. Finally, the suitable areas in the developement area of special economic zone of Salafcheghan are recommended to the relevant managers for disposal of industrial waste, because of reduction of transportation costs and exemption from customs payments law for wastes of foreign raw materials.