Amanuel Biset Belete, Asmare Belay Nigussie and Dawit Munye
This study aimed at selecting a suitable solid waste disposal site for Dessie town by utilizing an integrated geographic information system (GIS) and multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). To achieve the target of the study, the first step was determining the capacity of the required site by estimating solid waste generation rate and then overlay suitability analysis of different layers were done. To determine the rate of waste generation, amount of generated wastes collected from a total of 146 households and 59 non-households for seven consecutive date on April 2019. For selecting waste collection multi-stage sampling techniques were employed. For site suitability analysis, twelve relevant criteria were employed namely, proximity to river, road, residential area, water supply pipe, water well, reservoir, and prone areas, groundwater depth, slope, soil, geology, and land use/land cover. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to weight and standardized each criterion. The result shows that average daily waste generation rates were 0.45 kg / person / day. From suitability area analysis, 12.03% of Dessie town was suitable for landfill which satisfies the size of 1.49 km2 for the total municipal solid waste generated. Finally, the landfill site was selected from the candidate site which delineated from the suitable classes based on the size of the site, wind direction and to the center of the town using the comparison of weight of criteria in AHP evaluation. The result of this study will help as a preliminary input for further studies and the information supports for the concerned authorities to improve solid waste management of Dessie town.