Determination of potential sites for landfill using GIS and remote sensing techniques: A review.

A problem that most urban cities in developing countries suffer from the shortage of lands for suitable waste disposal in the world, especially in fast-growing cities, in0cluding Iraq. The process of solid waste management is considered complex and increasingly dangerous over time. The landfill is the most common type of solid waste disposal. In order to select a landfill site suitable for the population and the environment, several researchers have created and implemented various approaches and criteria. The major goal of this research was to come up with a generic approach for selecting landfill sites by compiling and cataloging the various methodologies and criteria that have been created throughout the years. Four basic sets of criteria have been discovered and summarized. For selecting the most common landfill sites used in the selection process, which include proximity, social, economic, environmental, and engineering criteria after comparing and summarizing studies published in various scientific journals. The strategies ranged primarily on environmental and engineering criteria with some being comprehensive which included social and economic factors. The most significant factors to consider when selecting sanitary landfill locations were, roads, water bodies, urban settlements, slope, soil type, power lines, railways, and land uses. However, there is still a lack of objective evaluation of these selection approaches; most research currently uses Geographical information system (GIS) in addition to multi-decision analysis to identify landfill sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]