Municipal solid waste landfill site selection using geographical information systems: a case study from Çorlu, Turkey

The rapid population growth due to fast urbanization in developing countries leads to environmentally sustainable and efficient management of solid waste. Insufficient solid waste landfill sites, in particular, require new areas because of rapid urbanization. This reveals the need to select appropriate landfill sites, in terms of pollution, that meet the requirements of curbing pollution. In this study, a new solid waste site selection tool was presented for the assessment and selection of areas for a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill using a combination of point count index and constraint overlaying method with a geographical information system (GIS). For this purpose, factors affecting the site selection tool development were gathered under three groups, namely geological and natural, environmental and social–economical. For the first group, weighting for each criterion—depending upon its relative importance—was assigned, and ratings were given appropriately with their relative magnitude of impact. For the second and third groups, buffer zones were created in order to perform overlay analysis. This tool was used to perform MSW landfill selection of Çorlu District. According to the final map produced with this tool, two areas were identified within the district limits. This procedure was time saving as it was quite easy and did not require too much time and money to collect data. However, besides the usefulness of the procedure, at the final stage of decision-making, some further investigations should also be made.