Landfill Site Selection for Municipal Solid Waste of Esfahan City Using Analytic Network Process Considering the Importance of Water Resources Protection

Selecting the suitable landfill site can prevent inappropriate ecological and socio economical effects. Industrial and economical development of the Esfahan metropolitan area and the fast increase in population and life standards has changed the amount and the components of the generated waste load. The present landfill has already reached its capacity and also the city is expanding toward this center. The fundamental studies for selecting suitable landfill sites should therefore be considered. Landfill site selection requires the analysis of spatial data, regulations and accepted criteria. In this research the multi criteria evaluation method by emphasis on GIS techniques was used for identifying suitable landfill sites for Esfahan city. Then the Analytic Network Process (ANP) was applied for prioritizing the suggested landfill sites. ANP is the modified version of AHP method which is based on the super matrix approach. This method is capable of applying for complex problems with non hierarchical structure and also give the possibility of considering interdependence relationships of decision criteria within and between levels. In this paper, in addition to evaluating the effective criteria in site selection and allocating the proposed landfill sites, the variation and relative importance of elements of these sites that cannot be considered in other decision making methods like AHP have been considered within the context of ANP method. The results indicated the significant importance of water resources protection in landfill site selection.