Site selection of municipal solid waste incineration plant using GIS and multicriteria decision analysis

ABSTRACT

Fast population growth and urbanization has increased the generation of municipal solid waste in Oman. Currently, Oman relies on landfills to handle growing amounts of waste, which has burdened the existing solid waste management infrastructure. This situation calls for establishing incineration plants that can considerably reduce the volume of waste, and can simultaneously produce electricity. However, one of the crucial steps in the planning of an incineration plant is the selection of an appropriate site that can overcome environmental and economic implications and eliminate community dissatisfaction. Therefore, to select an optimal site for incineration plant in Muscat and South Batinah governorates, where landfills receive the highest waste amounts per day, this research identified 11 criteria that cover the environmental, economic, and social concerns. These criteria were processed by combining the multicriteria decision making (MCDM) method and geographical information system (GIS) software where the suitability of individual criteria were evaluated and then integrated using the weighted overlay analysis to generate a final suitability map for incineration site selection. The final suitability map indicated that only 2% of the land is suitable for setting up an incineration plant in the study area, and the most suitable location with adequate area was found in Barka wilaya of South Batinah governorate.

Implications: Due to the escalation in MSW generation, Oman is looking for alternative strategies to reduce the volume of MSW. This has led to country’s interest in establishing a waste-to-energy plant (particularly incineration) in the future. However, locating a suitable site for the installation of an MSW incineration plant in Oman has never been studied before. Therefore, to bridge the gap in knowledge, this research focuses on selecting a suitable site for a municipal solid waste incineration plant using GIS and multicriteria decision analysis. This study highlights the suitability of Muscat and North Batinah governorates of Oman where landfills receive huge amounts of MSW on a daily basis and are close to becoming saturated. Moreover, the suitability of land in both governorates is assessed to overcome environmental and economic implications and eliminate community dissatisfaction. This research not only provides the level of suitability of land in both governorates, but also selects a suitable site, which will be beneficial for the government of Oman in future when making a decision regarding the location of the plant.

Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge the support of Oman Environmental Services Holding Company (be’ah), National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning in Oman, and Oman Electricity Transmission Company S.A.O.C for providing the required data. The authors would also like to thank all experts that shared their knowledge and opinions on the subject under study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation in the Sultanate of Oman under block Funding Program. The Research Council Block Funding Agreement No (TRC/BFP/MEC/01/2019)

Notes on contributors

Mohammed F.M. Abushammala

Mohammed F.M. Abushammala holds a PhD (Year 2012) in Civil and Structural Engineering (Environmental Engineering), from The National University of Malaysia, Malaysia. He is an Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering at the Department of Civil Engineering, Middle East College (MEC), Oman. He is a well-informed and innovative educator in the field of Civil and Environmental Engineering at university and college level with 10 years of experience in teaching at different levels at assistant and associate professor. He is a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), and a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). He has 12 years of research experience with a distinguished record of publications in the field of civil and Environmental Engineering. His research interest includes municipal solid waste management, waste to energy technologies, landfill gas emission and methane oxidation, biogas, and the application of expert system in environmental engineering.

Wajeeha A. Qazi

Wajeeha A. Qazi holds a BEng. in Civil Engineering (Environmental Engineering), from Middle East College, Oman. She is Research Assistant at the Department of Civil Engineering, Middle East College (MEC), Oman. Her research works focuses on life cycle assessment of municipal solid waste management, waste-to-energy technologies, landfill gas emission, and quantification of GHG emissions from waste systems.

Siham Frrag

Siham Farrag is currently working at Civil Engineering department, Middle east college, Oman. She obtained her PhD in Civil Engineering specialization, Transportation Science from Hasselt University, Belgium. Siham has more than 15 years of research experience in the field of transportation and Traffic Engineering. Her research interests focus on solving different transportation problems which included but not limited to the following topics: Traffic Safety, Drivers behavior, traffic management and traffic incident managements, intelligent transportation system (ITS), autonomous vehicles, impact of transportation on environment and air pollution, and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis.

Motasem Y.D. Alazaiza

Motasem Alazaiza is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, at AꞌSharqiyah University, Sultanate of Oman. His research interest is in the transport of multiple fluid phases (water, oil, gases) in porous media and the mass transfer between those phases, with a particular specialization in the behaviour of gases in contaminated groundwater systems. My research is applied to understand the fate and transport of non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) in soil and groundwater, develop and improve remediation technologies, and assess risks associated with unconventional resource development, and uses a combination of laboratory experiments and numerical modelling.

Mohammad K. Younes

Mohammad K. Younes is an Associate Professor at Philadelphia University – Jordan. His PhD in Civil Engineering and Built environment specialized in solid waste management. He has more than 10 years of research experience in the field of environmental pollution control and solid waste management as well as treatment technologies. His research interest focuses on multi criteria decision analysis implementation to solve the environmental issues like selecting the best treatment technologies, sitting undesired facilities. Moreover, he has a wide modeling experience using. He used AI tools to model some environmental related issues like traffic emissions, solid waste generation as well as solar radiation. He awarded many grant research locally and internationally.