Landfill Site Selection by Integrating Geographical Information Systems and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: A Case Study of Freetown, Sierra Leone

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated approach for the identification of potential candidate landfill sites in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone via a two-stage analysis. In the first-stage analysis, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) techniques, Boolean Intersection and buffer, were used to identify areas restricted by rules and physical constraints, and therefore excluded from the study area. The second stage involved using factor criteria to identify candidate landfill sites in the area recommended for further study. In this stage, the geographical data were analyzed with the IDRISI32 software package. Pair-wise comparison was used to compare and assign weights to the environmental, economic, social, and transportation criteria for the selection of candidate landfill sites. The candidate landfill sites were then ranked by size.

Keywords:

• Landfill siting
• GIS
• Boolean Intersection
• Pair-wise comparison
• Cities
• Freetown
• Sierra Leone
• Africa