Fuzzy expert system and gis for solid waste disposal siting in regional planning

One of the most difficult tasks faced by most communities, particularly in the urban areas, is the siting of new landfill in implementing a solid waste management program. The siting processes must ensure that appropriate sites be selected for dumping the solid waste, which (1) maximise the useability, (2) minimise the cost, (3) minimise the environment impact, and most importantly, (4) minimise the risk to human health. The paper reports a methodology developed for solid waste disposal siting in urban planning by integrating fuzzy set theory, expert system and GIS. It explores the prospect of coupling fuzzy theory and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) into a raster-based GIS for the preliminary screening of landfill sites. The subsequent processing of decision-making based on fuzzy expert system incorporated with GIS will also be demonstrated. A Current application project is demonstrated for solid waste siting for the urban areas of Bangkok, Thailand. Through the application, the use of a variety of techniques including fuzzy logics, GIS modelling and expert system will be demonstrated. The strength and weakness of different approaches towards the solution are also discussed.