Combining GIS Applications and Analytic Hierarchy Process Method for Landfill Siting in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq

The Governorate of Sulaymaniyah is located in the north of Iraq with a population of 856 990 in 2016. The process of selecting a landfill site is considered as a complicated task with several factors and regulations to take into account. Currently, there are no landfill sites in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate that Governorate that respect the prerequisites of the scientific and environmental criteria. Therefore, in this study, thirteen suitable criteria were selected. These criteria are: groundwater depth, urban area, rivers, villages, soil types, elevation, roads, slope, land use, archaeological sites, power lines, oil and gas field, and geology. These criteria were used in the GIS (Geographic Information System), due to its high ability to manage and analyze various data. In addition, the AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) method was used to derive the weightings of criteria, through a matrix of pairwise comparison. In this work, the study site was classified into four different areas according to the Suitability Index for landfill sites, where they all satisfied the scientific and environmental criteria.

Alkaradaghi, K., Ali, S.S., Al-Ansari, N. and Laue, J., 2019, October. Combining GIS Applications and Analytic Hierarchy Process Method for Landfill Siting in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq. In Euro-Mediterranean Conference for Environmental Integration (pp. 1811-1815). Springer, Cham.