Suitable Solid Waste Disposal Site Selection Using Geographical Information System: A Case of Debre Markos Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

In this study an effort has been made to identify suitable sites for safe disposal. For proper identification and selection of appropriate sites for solid waste disposal careful and systematic procedures need to be adopted and followed. The main objective of this research was identified the suitable solid waste disposal site by using the GIS-based approaches in Debre markos town. The present study had considered various factors like road networks; rivers, soil, slope, altitude and land use/ land cover for selecting a suitable solid waste disposal site within the study area. The relative weights of the factor were estimated using AHP and factor maps were developed by using GIS spatial operations. The final weighted factor map produced an overall solid waste disposal suitability map. The solid waste disposal site suitability map was presented in four suitability index such as highly suitable, moderately suitable, low suitable and unsuitable. The result shows that around 21% area is highly suitable for solid waste disposal site, 25% is moderately suitable, 28% of study area has low suitable and 26% area is unsuitable for solid waste disposal site.