Secure Landfill Site Selection for Hazardous Waste Disposal in Khon Kaen Province

Abstract

Selecting the location of a hazardous waste landfill consists of several factors to be considered in a decision. The purpose of this research is to determine factors affecting site selection for hazardous waste disposal in landfill. The important factors were selected by experts or people involved, consisting of academicians, government agencies involved in supervision, industrial entrepreneurs or businessmen, and people or community representatives. The Rank-order Centroid (ROC) method was then applied to calculate the relative weight of important factors. It was found that the most important factor for the selection of a location for hazardous waste landfill is the acceptance and needs of local communities, followed by public participation, natural water sources, areas with complaints, distance from community, rules of city plan, and transportation routes, respectively. The second purpose of this research is to select a suitable area to locate the disposal plant in Khon Kaen Province. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was used to solve the problem. Kut Nam Sai subdistrict was found to be the most appropriate site, followed by Khok Sung subdistrict and Muang Wan subdistrict, respectively. Furthermore, Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method was also used to find the result in order to compare with the AHP method. The result was consistent with the AHP, i.e., Kut Nam Sai subdistrict was the most appropriate. This was followed by Muang Wan subdistrict and Khok Sung subdistrict, respectively.