Landfill Site Selection in Al-Najaf Governorate, Iraq

Abstract

Solid waste management aspect is one of the most important challenges facing the local administration in the Governorate of Najaf. Therefore, this study aims to provide for solid waste management problem by choosing the best locations for the establishment of sanitary landfills in the governorate. In this study, GIS (geographic information system) and MCDA (multi-criteria decision analysis) were used based on 17 environmental, economic and geological criteria converted to input digital map layers. These were urban centres, cemetery, airports, electrical power lines, oil pipes, railways, roads, slope, historical sites, main rivers, industrial areas, religion sites, wells, military area, electrical power plants, nature reserves and national borders to select most importance sites in the governorate. AHP (analytic hierarchy process) method was used in weighting the criteria used. All layers' maps were graded from 0 (not suitable) to 5 (most suitable) using spatial information scale then SAW (simple additive weighting) method was integrated in GIS used to calculate the suitability index for the studied area. The results indicated that 4.4% of the study region is suitable for landfill siting with grading values greater than 4.0. This included five sites distributed in three qadhaas of governorate.