Site Suitability Analysis for Solid Waste Disposal Using Multi-Criteria Analysis: A Case Study of Lae City, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Solid waste management is one of the burning issues in this modern world because of the rapid growth of population and urbanization. Identifying sustainable handy disposal sites is challenging using the traditional site surveying process locally, which is time-consuming. Remote sensing (RS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are alternative and effective tools for identifying suitable sites for the dumping of solid waste through multi-criteria analysis (MCA). This study was conducted in Lae city under the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The main aim of this case study was to identify a suitable disposal site for dumping urban waste in the nearby location of Lae City using RS and GIS techniques. This study considered a handful of factors to become aware of appropriate stable waste disposal sites, particularly distance from important roads, rivers, lakes, coastline, hospitals, clinics, schools, residential, supermarkets, industries, topographic height, slope of the ground, land use/ land cover, hydrological soil characteristics, rainfall, and lithological setting. These factors were generated either using satellite images through the spatial analysis process or from the legacy national GIS database respectively. Weighted sum overlay operation was used in this study which worked based on user-specified weight to each parameter and rand to all the subclass under all the selected parameters. The study identifies 433 hectares of land (4% land area) as very highly suitable in the northwest and the northeast part of the study area. This result will be very helpful to the planners for the rehabilitation or construction of new dumping site/s for powerful control to triumph over the modern-day situation.