SELECTION OF WASTE-DISPOSAL SITES USING GIS

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology is used to identify ca ndidate sites for a solid waste disposal facility in the Golbasi regio n of Turkey that has suffered from the negative impact of a current bu t poorly-located open-dump site on the environment. The municipality o f Galbasi has noticed its deleterious effect on the environment, and h as thus decided to dismiss this open-dump site and search for new land fill sites. In this study, the procedure followed under a GIS framewor k rejects the unacceptable sites considering environmental factors exc lusively, other than economic and political issues, contained in the f orm of multiple layers of attribute information to select the candidat e sites for landfilling wastes through an overlay analysis performed b y GIS software, ARC/INFO V 7.1. For the spatial data requirements of G IS, a number of thematic map layers (ground water, wetlands and swamp areas, surface water, roads, topographic contours, ecological features , settlements, erosion susceptibility zones, and soil type) are prepar ed in digital form. In this application, GIS is considered as a screen ing tool in a site selection process to narrow the number of candidate sites, subsequently leading to one or more sites for detailed investi gation. Preliminary ranking for a group of potential sites is done on the basis of simple calculations coupled with on-site field studies.