A decision making tool for hazardous waste landfill site selection

Abstract

Problem statement: Continuous global environmental crisis and degradation has been a challenge for the sustainability of living on earth. This threat was posed by industrialization, high products need, urbanization and population growth activities. As a result, the hazardous waste generation has tremendously increased. Approach: Landfill was one of the positive approaches to handle hazardous waste generated in great quantity. The appropriate selection of landfill site played a major role to remediate the hazardous waste materials. Attributes to be considered for decision-making were selected based on literature, observations with weightage assigned to each attribute following the pair wise comparison method and sensitivity index on a scale of 0 to 1 based on attribute measurement. The attributes were then grouped and ranked following Delphi approach. Results: In environmental assessment, field based study of three landfill sites such as Melakottaiyur, Pachaiyankuppam and Gummidipoondi in Tamil Nadu, India were selected and the sites scored a Risk Index (RI) of 298.75, 369.05 and 408.25 respectively. In economical assessment, economic viability related attributes were analyzed and the three landfill site such as Pachaiyankuppam, Melakottaiyur and Gummidipoondi scored a RI of 86.1, 94.3 and 131.5 respectively. Conclusion/Recommendations: In environmental assessment the landfill sites were shortlisted. In order to achieve economic sustainability of the landfill, economic viability related attributes has to be analyzed with high priority and weightage in economical assessment. © 2010 Science Publications.