An Evaluation of Analytic, Hierarchical, and Linear Weighted Combination Methods in Locating Appropriate Places for City Waste Disposal with Emphasis on Geomorphic

Locating and Finding appropriate places is one of the most important issues in waste disposal system of a city. Saqez with a population of 140,000 people is one of the largest cities in Kurdistan province. Due to population increase as well as changes in people’s consumption habits the amount of garbage has been recently increased in the city. Despite this problem, there is not an appropriate way of solid waste disposal in the city. The main purpose of the present research was to study the role of geomorphic agents in site location for solid waste disposal. Having the advantages of geographic information system technology and remote sensing techniques, the present article has focused on the best sites which can be selected for garbage disposal. First, important factors in site selection for garbage disposal were considered; then thirteen layers were digitized and weighed on the basis of the existing standards. The standards include slope, erosion, land instability, water, underground water in wells, protected areas, airport, vegetation lines, electricity lines, as well as distance from city and populated areas. At the other stage, the mentioned layer was entered EDRISI and Arc GIS software; specific database formation was prepared using multi criteria decision models such as hierarchical process and weighted linear combination. The obtained results indicated that the two mentioned methods could locate four different places in the south of Saqez at the first stage and a final place last for garbage disposal of the city. Finally, considering the overlaps between the models in Arc GIS environment, the best place for garbage disposal in Saqez is an area of 74 hectares which can accommodate more than 130 tons of garbage per day for at least twenty years.