A Spatial decision support tool for landfill site selection for Municipal solid waste management

Abstract

A healthy population has a positive effect on the growth of a country. One of the ways to achieve this is to have an effective waste management system. Waste management involves several activities which can be categorized into collection, transportation and disposal of waste. Computerizing the processes involved in these activities can help to improve efficiency and effectiveness in waste management. However, the process of particular interest and environmental concern is the effective selection of sites for waste disposal (landfill sites). Effective selection of these sites requires consideration of various parameters like an area’s distance from roads, rivers, lakes, wetlands, area’s soil type, population distribution in the area, and an areas’ steepness among others. The present process of landfill site selection in Uganda is manual, costly and time consuming. It is vital to use computer based technologies like Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) for such complex processes. The project described in this report, deals with developing a spatial decision support tool for selecting suitable landfill sites for municipal solid waste disposal in Kampala and the neighbouring Wakiso district. The tool was designed based on existing literature and involves use of GIS and Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) for the landfill site selection process. Ground Truthing was used for validation of the site selection process. This tool is vital during the procurement process of landfill sites, because it would enable the concerned authorities to save time and costs associated with inspection and evaluation for bidders whose sites are located far outside the range of potentially identified areas since those ”out of range” sites would end up being rejected anyway.