TITLE:
Modeling Environmental Susceptibility of Municipal Solid Waste Disposal Sites: A Case Study in São Paulo State, Brazil
AUTHORS:
Victor Fernandez Nascimento, Anahi Chimini Sobral, Pedro R. Andrade, Jean Pierre Henry Balbaud Ometto, Nazli Yesiller
KEYWORDS:
Modeling, Geographic Information System (GIS), Environmental Impact, Municipal Solid Waste, Landfills, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geographic Information System,
Vol.9 No.1,
February
21,
2017
ABSTRACT: The large excess of solid
waste generated in cities is a result of population growth and economic
development. Properly managing this municipal solid waste (MSW) is a challenge,
mainly in underdeveloped and developing countries where financial concerns are
an added problem. From the environmental point of view, a major issue is
properly disposing MSW taking into consideration a wide range of factors, and
working with different spatial data. In this study, we used geographic
information system (GIS) to perform multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)
conducted by analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The development of the
environmental impact susceptibility model (EISM) for municipal solid waste
disposal sites (MSWDS) applied to the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil considered
factors such as geology, pedology, geomorphology, water resources, and climate
represented by fifteen associated sub-factors. The results indicated that more
than 82% of Sao Paulo’s territory is situated in areas with very low, low, and
medium environmental impact susceptibility categories. However, in the
remaining 18% of the state land area, 85 landfills are located in areas with
high and very high environmental impact susceptibility categories. These
results are alarming because these 85 landfills receive approximately 17,886
tons of MSW on a daily basis, which corresponds to 46% of all municipal solid
waste disposed in Sao Paulo state. Therefore, decision makers, urban planners
and policymakers could use the findings of the EISM towards mitigating the
environmental impacts caused by MSWDS.