SITE SELECTION OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE LANDFILLS USING ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS METHOD IN A GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT IN GIROFT

municipal solid waste generation is among the most significant sources which threaten the globalenvironmental health. as an ideal selection depends on considering several independent factorsconcerning land use, socio economy and hydrogeology, the use of a multi criteria evaluation methodseems inevitable. taking benefit of geographic information system as a tool in combination withgeographical information technology, equips the spatial decision support systems in appropriate siteselection of sanitary landfills. the present study involves a kind of multi criteria evaluation methodunder the name of weighted linear combination by using geographical information technology as apractical instrument to evaluate the suitability of the vicinity of giroft city in kerman province of iranfor landfill. water permeability, slope, distance from rivers, depth of underground watertable, distancefrom residential areas, distance from generation centers, general environmental criterion and distancefrom roads are the criteria which have been taken in to consideration in the process of analyzing.superposing all of the raster type layers including geomorphologic, hydrologic, humanistic and landuse criteria in land suitability, the final zoning of appropriate, fairly appropriate and inappropriatedistricts have been identified. considering relative priority of all criteria in comparison with others, aspecific weight is designated to each criterion according to their total influence on the whole process ofdecision making. the results from the application of the presented methodology are zones for landfillwith varying zonal land suitability. finally the zones will be ranked in descending order to indicate thepriority of different options in front of the eyes of decision makers. the results achieved by this studymay help policy makers of giroft city by a variety of options for being considered as sanitary landfilllocations.