A NEW APPROACH FOR SITING LANDFILLS USING FUZZY-SETS

Current landfill siting practice is based on the simple process of eli mination. Starting from a region, such as a state or a country, one id entifies tracts of undeveloped lands that are large enough for the pro posed landfill development. Thereafter, the selection process eliminat es or screens out those sites that are prohibited by the applicable la w for landfill development. This process subsequently generates a numb er of candidate sites which may have different impacts on the environm ental, economic, and political aspects of landfill site selection. The re is, however, little effective, efficient guidance on how to pursue this siting process further. This paper documents the development of a new approach for siting landfills. The new approach lakes the advanta ges of fuzzy set theory in formulating a procedure for systematic eval uation and ranking of prospective sites based on subjective and ambigu ous data. A conceptual model for landfill siting is presented, followe d by discussions of various aspects of the model, including establishm ent of the evaluation tree, determination of weights and relative scor es, and the overall assessment and ranking. Results of this study show s that the developed model is an effective tool for siting landfills.