APPLYING ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS AND MULTIPLE CRITERIA ANALYSIS FOR MUNICIPAL LANDFILL SITE SELECTION IN BOJNOURD, IRAN

One of the important environmental issues in today's life is the undesirable influence of municipal landfill site on the environment, especially ground water. Thus, it is very important to find appropriate landfill sites. The most important aim of site selection for municipal landfill is to ensure that the selected site has minimum negative effects on the environment and society. There are various methods for landfill site selection, most of which are GIS-based and use digital information and their weighting to determine susceptible and inappropriate landfill zones. To determine the zones with acceptable landfill potential in city of Bojnourd, 16 digital layers prepared in GIS software were combined; as a result, the whole studied region was divided into different zones (appropriate to inappropriate) and classified according to the priorities. In this process, the best landfill site was identified in the west of the aquifer of Bojnourd. Finally, characteristics of the proposed and current landfill sites were separately investigated.