GIS and Solid Waste Management

I don’t want to protect the environment. I want to create a world where the environment doesn’t need protection.   
-Anonymous

Solid Waste Management – Concept

Nowadays it is hard to find areas of human activity and development that have not harmed or affected the environment. Commercial, physical and social activities tend to produce solid waste without proper planning which has led to both economic and environment sufferings. The conventional methods (Generally municipal solid waste is collected and deposited in sanitary landfill which attract birds, rodents and fleas to the waste dumping site and result in the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and other harmful gases) of waste disposal prove out to be inconvenient and expensive hence triggering the need of Geographical Information System(GIS) and remote sensing. It has not been easy to monitor large areas routinely and systematically for waste dumping sites. GIS technology which uses satellite data and algorithms to find unknown illegal sites has proved to work extremely effectively and can pro-actively detect and stop illegal sites over very large areas, quickly, and cost-effectively.

Why should we use GIS for solid waste management?

GIS along with Remote sensing has been extensively deployed in waste management studies. Data captured from aerial photography, videography, and optical, thermal, microwave or LiDAR sensors is integrated with attribute and layers of prerequisite information which could make it easy to understand the area’s waste generation nature and trend. These trends are useful while planning waste management and provide remedies while dealing with such severe environment issue.

This technique is used to generate optimal route for collecting solid waste. GIS is a tool that not only reduces time and cost of the site selection, but also provide asset management services for future monitoring program of the site. Moreover, GIS information can be related spatially, exchanged, compared, evaluated, and processed with a very good flexibility.

How it is done!!

Solid Waste management involves steps like

• Demarcating exact location of waste bins on base map by GPS or by surveying.
• Attributing record of the waste bins.
• Identifying the pre-existing waste disposal pattern.
• Locating the optimal waste dumping ground/landfill site and maintaining a record about the amount of waste being dumped at the landfill site.

The following conceptual work flow diagram can provide us the basic idea about how solid waste management is implemented using GIS.

 

Selection of suitable landfill sites

Properly selected dumping site is essential for solid waste management as unplanned dumping and trenching of waste could be hazardous to environment and human as well as wildlife health.

The suitability of the location of the solid waste landfill is achieved by producing the digital elevation model (DEM) representing the topography of the solid waste landfill site and its nearby surroundings. The DEM generally is the 3D representation of the topographic surface demonstrating hill, valley, plain, slope, coastal and water areas, vegetation etc.

Furthermore, Slope and visibility analysis is performed to digital elevation model (DEM).

• Slope analysis expresses the elevations according to varying slope values which can be beneficial for the movement of heavy vehicles for the transportation of heavy tonnage vehicles to the solid waste landfill site. Moreover, slope analysis helps to determine direction and the effects of dust and particulate matter originating from solid waste landfill site

 

Classifying the solid waste landfill site in terms of Land Use (distances to settlement areas and proximity to water bodies)

To monitor the ongoing process LULC pattern over a period of time Supervised classification using AHP is applied in turn which is used to prepare LULC maps of the landfill site.

• The current and prospective use of land tends to be important criteria involved in selecting landfill site. Ideally, barren lands with less socio-economic, environmental and political value or cost is recommended as disposal site.
• Commutation plays major role while locating landfill site. An ideal landfill site should neither be located too close to main road where the general public move as landfill can have harmful effect to health nor it should be located too far from main road as it can hamper transportation and access to the site.
• Proximity of a landfill site to water bodies poses extreme threat to environment as water can runoff and leach the landfill site. Hence, waste disposal should be placed away from water points.

Summary

GIS and application of multi-criteria analysis can produce suitable sites for solid wastes disposal which is a vital component in solid waste management.
Global positioning system used for earth observation can track waste mainly by tracking vehicles, or paperwork chains. GNSS satellite technologies is deployed to physically track the waste itself, allowing them to have confirmation as to where the waste has gone, rather than just potential movements.GIS, remote sensing, GPS along with other technologies are helpful in producing DEM, LULC etc. which plays a significant role in solid waste management.