Case Study 5: A Multi-criteria Decision-Making for Alternative Landfill Site Selections Using Fuzzy TOPSIS Approach

Identification of suitable alternate landfill site is the Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) problem. Several MCDM techniques are available to deal with such problem and used for decision-making. One such popular MCDM technique is Fuzzy TOPSIS which is applied in this case study for the purpose of alternate landfill site selection due to its ability to perform rational and appropriate decision-making in such types of problems. Varanasi is selected at the target region for assessing the best alternate landfill sites because Varanasi is facing serious threat of waste management in the region. To select the best alternate landfill sites in Varanasi, distance from waste production centre, distance from roads, depth to groundwater, distance from water bodies, distance from settlement land, types of soils and slope were considered. Out of these all seven criteria, four criteria, viz. distance from waste production centre, distance from roads, distance from settlement land and slope, were selected as beneficial criteria while rest three criteria, viz. depth to groundwater, distance from water bodies and types of soils, were considered as Non-beneficial (cost) Criteria. Five alternate sites, i.e. Khalispur, Bikapur, Rohania, Nuaon and Tikari, were selected to choose the best alternate among them. Result revealed that Rohania is the best alternate landfill site having highest Closeness Coefficient (0.899) and Tikari is the worst landfill site having lowest Closeness Coefficient (0.117).