Fuzzy GIS assisted landfill siting analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a prototypical fuzzy geographical information system (GIS) developed to facilitate landfill siting analysis. Landfill siting requires extensive effort to process massive spatial information, to evaluate various factors, and to review numerous criteria and regulations. A computerized GIS, although capable of effectively manipulating spatial information, generally lacks the ability to evaluate the suitability levers of candidate sites based on factors/criteria with some degree of imprecision and/or uncertainty. Because of their imprecision/uncertainty, many siting factors/criteria are not appropriate to be evaluated with a binary assessment, e.g., yes/no. Fuzzy set algorithms are therefore applied to overcome this difficulty. With proper membership functions assigned to imprecise/uncertain factors/criteria, the suitability score of a candidate site can be determined by a series of fuzzy calculations. The algorithms are incorporated into a previously developed landfill siting GIS to assist an engineer in improving siting decisions. This article, in addition to the description of the prototype, presents a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed Fuzzy GIS.