Landfill Site Selection for Solid Waste Disposal Using Geographical Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Approach in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality, Ghana.
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Date
September, 2016
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Abstract
Municipal solid waste management is global environmental challenge in the urban areas, due to an increase in the quantity of municipal solid waste generated as a result of population growth and has resulted in the difficulty of locating suitable land areas to be used as landfills. The problem of environmental pollution and health hazards due to waste disposal can be overcome by selecting suitable locations for their proper disposal. Waste disposal in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality which is the study area of this research, is mainly by open space dumping which has the potential to contaminate both surface and ground water and other environmental hazards in and around these open dumps. This research combined Multi-Criteria Approach and Geographic Information System (GIS), in the selection of a landfill site in the study. The locations should meet both the economic and environmental requirements of a landfill site. The factors considered include land use, surface water bodies and distance to roads. The rest are railway line, settlements/residential area, geology and slope. The use of GIS, was a vital tool for the preparation of multi criteria map layers. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model was used for pairwise comparison of all ten criteria and relative weights of importance were generated. All the criteria were standardized to a common scale before combining them. All the criteria were combined using weighted overlay analysis tools in ArcGIS with their corresponding weights of importance. The resultant suitability index map showed areas that are suitable for siting of a landfill based on all the ten input criteria. It was realized after putting all potential site to further screening and analyses, ten (10) sites were selected for further analysis and ranked according to their suitability for a landfill. Each of these suitable sites has a minimum land size of 50 ha or 0.5 km2 enough to last for at least 15 years.
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A Thesis submitted to the Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Environmental Science,