Suitability Analysis Of Solid Waste Disposal Site Using Geographical Information System Tool: (The Case Of Gondar Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

The problem of environmental pollution and health hazards due to inappropriate solid waste disposal is critical in developing countries like Ethiopia, Gondar town is one of the town in Ethiopia facing from environmental pollution due to lack of appropriate dumping site and solid wastes are not dumped in suitable area which leads pollution of environment in and around dumping area. Therefore, the main objective of this study is selection of suitable site for disposal of solid waste using Geographic Information System (GIS) tools. The data used for this study were a spatial resolution of (DEM 20m*20m), satellite map (landsat 8) to generate current LULC of the town, geological map, soil map and structural map of the study area which was collected from different governmental organization. Selection of the most suitable landfill site was determined through the integration of geographic information system (GIS) tools, multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and remote sensing techniques. To select suitable landfill site several parameters were considered such as slope, built up area, historical site, main road, surface water, land use/land cover, geology, ground water depth, groundwater well and soil. For each parameter map layer was prepared using GIS tools. The weight of each parameter was assigned based on their importance using pairwise comparison method in AHP. After the prepared map layer was standardized and weighted. Suitability map was prepared by overlay analyses on GIS based Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) analysis to select the suitable solid waste disposal sites and ranked as the value given 1; unsuitable, 2; low suitable 3; moderately suitable and 4; highly suitable were determined. Result shows that 9.1% of the study area is highly suitable, 21.1% is moderately suitable, 42.1% is low suitable and 27.7% is Unsuitable. The most suitable disposal site area from the town result shows that eastern direction 4.97% (12.1 km2 ), western direction 0.43% (1km2 ), north eastern direction 0.83% (2km2 ) and the south east direction 0.43% (1km2 ). These most suitable disposal sites were free from environmental, social and public health risks.