A Comparative Study of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) Methods in Site Selection of Urban Waste Landfill (Case Study: Ramhormoz)

One of the serious and growing potential in most large urban areas is the shortage of land for waste disposal. An inapproprriate landfill site may have negative enviromental, economic and ecological impacts. Therefore, it should be selected carefully by considering both regulations and constraints on there source. Choosing different factors leads to diversity in data layers and Geographic Information System (GIS) is very suitable due to the ability to manage huge volumes of data with different sources. The main aim of this research is to determine a suitable landfill site with less impact on environment For this purpose, the following data layers and maps have been utilized in this study, maps of slope, use land, soil, the depth of groundwater and the layers related to the distance from centers of waste generation (Ramhormoz), Population centers (village), surface water sources, underground water source (well, Spring), road network. The results of present research represents that the conditions in Analytical Hierarchy process(AHP) method has less certainty and the lack of definite limitations in this method, the sites selected according to Weighted Linear Combination(WLC) and Fuzzy-AHP (FAHP) have more parameters. However in studing the WLC and FAHP methods applied in this study, it was revealed that although WLC is simple, it has deficiencies; this method will locate many areas that may not be suitable, meanwhile FAHP, by ordered weights, offers this chance to the decision marker to include more important subjects which have greater role in site selection. Regarding to this ability, the result of site selection by FAHP has better resolution.