Waste Management 26 (2006) 299–306

www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman

Municipal solid waste landfill siting using intelligent system

Omar Al-Jarrah a, Hani Abu-Qdais b,*

a
Department of Computer Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid 22110, Jordan
b
Department of Civil Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 3030, Irbid 22110, Jordan

Accepted 26 January 2005

Available online 12 July 2005

Abstract

Historically, landfills have been the dominant alternative for the ultimate disposal of municipal solid waste. This paper addresses
the problem of siting a new landfill using an intelligent system based on fuzzy inference. The proposed system can accommodate new
information on the landfill site selection by updating its knowledge base. Several factors are considered in the siting process includ-
ing topography and geology, natural resources, socio-cultural aspects, and economy and safety. The system will rank sites on a scale
of 0–100%, with 100% being the most appropriate one. A weighting system is used for all of the considered factors. The results from
testing the system using different sites show the effectiveness of the system in the selection process.
Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The contamination of groundwater by landfill leachate

Landfilling has been used for many years as the most
common method for the disposal of solid waste generated
by different communities (Komilis et al., 1999). Despite
the intensive efforts that are directed to the recycling
and recovery of solid wastes, landfills remain and will re-
main an integral part of most solid waste management
plans. Solid waste disposed in a landfill usually is sub-
jected to a series of complex biochemical and physical
processes, which lead to the production of both liquid
and gaseous emissions. As water percolates through the
solid waste matrix, leachate is produced which contains
soluble components and degradation products from the
refuse. Greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon
dioxide are generated during the stabilization of the or-
ganic fraction of solid waste. Volatile components of the
solid waste tend to be emitted into the atmosphere with
the landfill gases.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +962 2 7201000; fax: +962 2 7095018.
E-mail addresses: aljarrah@just.edu.jo (O. Al-Jarrah), hqdais@
just.edu.jo (H. Abu-Qdais).
has been reported by several researchers (Nixon et al.,
1997; Scultz and Kjeldsen, 1986; Sawney and Kozoloski,
1984). Lee and Jones (1994) reported the potential adverse
impacts of municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills on those
who own or use properties near such facilities. Hirsshfeld
et al. (1992) reported that the property values near MSW
landfills are adversely impacted by the landfill for dis-
tances of a mile or more from the area where waste depo-
sition occurs. Adverse environmental impacts, public
health and socio-economic issues associated with MSW
landfills have led to the issuance of stricter regulations
and increased public opposition to the siting of such facil-
ities (not in my back yard syndrome) (Ham, 1993). As a
result, the siting of a new landfill has become one of the
most difficult tasks faced by communities involved in
MSW management (Tchobanoglous et al., 1993).
Siting a sanitary landfill requires an extensive evalua-
tion process in order to identify the best available disposal
location. This location must comply with the require-
ments of governmental regulations and at the same time
must minimize economic, environmental, health, and so-
cial costs (Siddiqui et al., 1996). The site selection proce-
dure, however, should make maximum use of the

0956-053X/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2005.01.026
300 O. Al-Jarrah, H. Abu-Qdais / Waste Management 26 (2006) 299–306
available information and ensure that the outcome of the
process is acceptable by most stakeholders. Therefore,
landfill siting generally requires processing a variety of
spatial data. Processing the data by conventional methods
using drawing and calculation tools is generally time and
resources consuming. The utilization of artificial intelli-
gence technology, such as expert systems, will help in solid
waste planning and management, particularly in the land-
fill siting process (Thomas et al., 1990).
Ramuu and Kennedy (1994) presented a heuristic
algorithm for locating a solid waste disposal site. They
indicated that there are a number of criteria that can be
used to determine the suitability of a potential disposal
site. In order to minimize the transportation cost, the ap-
proach proposed by Ramuu and Kennedy allowed that
the landfill could be located along any road linkage.
Although transportation cost is an important consider-
ation, other factors such as the aesthetics of the solid
waste disposal site also should be taken into account.
Kao and Lin (1996) proposed a siting model that was
explored for use with raster-based GIS. A mixed integer-
programming model was developed to obtain a landfill
site with optimal compactness of the site, which refers
to the ratio of perimeter to site area.
Siddiqui et al. (1996) used GIS and the analytical
hierarchy process (AHP) decision-making procedure to
aid in preliminary site selection. The GIS was used to
manipulate and present spatial data, while the AHP
was used to rank potential landfill areas based on a wide
variety of criteria, such as hydro-geology, land use and
proximity from urban centers.
Valentine (1997) presented a system of a multiple-as-
pect alternative evaluation for the selection of a landfill
in the Urbino region in Italy. The system consists of a
matrix that provides environmental categories and im-
pact indicators. He stressed the importance of objective
methodologies to help in making the best decision in the
selection of landfill sites.
Charnpratheep et al. (1997) explored the prospect of
coupling fuzzy set theory with GIS for the preliminary
screening of landfill sites in Thailand. Proximity of geo-
graphic objects, slope and elevation were the criteria
used for the investigation. However, the authors recom-
mended carrying out further studies involving other
landfill selection criteria for preliminary screening, such
as socio-economic and hydro-geologic criteria. Gupta
et al. (2003) utilized fuzzy logic, which took into account
the uncertainty during the process of the environmental
impacts assessment of landfill siting and considered the
frequency of impacts occurrence.
It is very difficult to come up with a selection criterion
that can precisely describe the preference of one site over
another, because most of the selection parameters can-
not be given precisely such as land slope, depth to
ground water from landfill base, distance to surface
water bodies, distance to residential area, and distance
from highway. For example, the distance from highway
can range from few meters to kilometers and the land
slope can vary across the site from flat to steep. This
makes fuzzy logic a more natural approach to this prob-
lem (Charnpratheep et al., 1997). Fuzzy logic was intro-
duced by (Zadeh, 1965) to describe and to deal with such
uncertainties. In this paper, the power of fuzzy logic and
fuzzy inference systems were utilized for preliminary
landfill site selection. All of the selection factors are rep-
resented by linguistic variables. The selection criteria are
weighted to represent the importance and contribution
of each factor.
The proposed system encodes the expertise of the envi-
ronmentalists in a fuzzy inference system that produces
the degree of preference of the selected site. It can be eas-
ily used by MSW planners to help in the initial selection
process of landfill site. The system is flexible and can be
adapted for new information on the landfill site that
may be incorporated into the knowledge base. This will
allow for interaction of the user with the computer to
help in better understanding the landfill siting process.
Several factors were considered in the siting process.
These factors cover topography and geology, natural re-
sources, socio-cultural aspects, and economy and safety.
The present paper is organized as follows. The fol-
lowing section describes the landfill selection factors.
Section 3 presents an overview of fuzzy sets and fuzzy
logic. The fuzzy inference system is presented in section
4, while Section 5 is devoted for presenting and discuss-
ing the simulation results. Finally, the paper is con-
cluded in Section 6.
2. Landfill siting factors
In assessing a site as a possible location for solid
waste landfilling, many factors could be considered (Sa-
vage et al., 1998). To achieve a successful siting pro-
cess, several significant environmental and political
obstacles have to be overcome. As a result, convincing
the decision-makers and gaining public acceptance for
the proposed landfill site are prerequisites for a success-
ful siting process. There are several factors that should
be considered when selecting a landfill site. These fac-
tors may be presented in many ways;, however, the
most useful way is the one that may be easily under-
stood by the community (Tchobanoglous et al.,
1993). The following factors are usually considered in
the landfill siting process:
Land slope.
Soil characteristics.
Depth to groundwater.
Surface water.
Environmentally rare or endangered species breeding
areas.
 O. Al-Jarrah, H. Abu-Qdais / Waste Management 26 (2006) 299–306
Distance to residential, religious and archeological
sites.
Land use.
Major infrastructure systems (e.g., electrical trans-
mission lines, gas, water or sewer pipelines).
Seismic activity.
Land cost.
Distance from highway.
Distance from waste generation source.
Site capacity.
Distance from airport runway.
In addition to the previously mentioned factors,
other factors may be considered based on local condi-
tions and circumstances. In this study, the factors used
for the analysis of landfill site suitability were grouped
into four main categories, including topography and
geology, natural resources, socio-cultural, and economy
and safety. Topography and geology factors include
land slope (LS) and soil hydraulic conductivity (SHC).
Depth to the ground water from landfill base (DGW)
and distance to surface water bodies (DSW) comprise
the natural resources group. The socio-cultural effects
are measured using the distance to Residential, Reli-
gious and Archeological sites (DRRA). Four parame-
ters are used to characterize the economy and safety,
which are land cost (LC) as a percentage of the highest
price, distance from highway (DH), distance from waste
generation source (DWGS) measured by the driving
time, and distance from airport runway (DAR).
The impact severity of each parameter was deter-
mined as high, moderate, low, and nil. Among the many
aspects to be considered in the site selection, it is impor-
tant to consider most of them and with objective weight-
ing. The degrees of suitability for a specific factor may
be different. A scoring system is commonly used to ex-
press this variability. In the present study, these factors
were given weights based on a scoring system ranging
from 0 to 1. These weights were given judgmentally
based on a consensus of those professionals with exper-
tise in sanitary landfill siting and on data from the tech-
nical literature.
3. Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic
Uncertainty is a major concept in our daily life.
Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic provide an approach to deal
with this concept. In recent years, fuzzy logic has been
successfully applied in a variety of disciplines including
computer vision, weather prediction, image processing,
nuclear reactor control, control of biomedical processes,
automatic tuning and many other fields of research (Ya-
ger and Zadeh, 1993; Gzogala and Rawlik, 1989; Al-Jar-
rah and AL-Rousan, 2001; Al-Jarrah and Halawani,
2001; Al-Jarrah and Bani-Melhem, 2001).
301
Fuzzy sets are sets with imprecise boundaries. A fuzzy
set provides a mechanism to express the degree of mem-
bership rather than accepting or denying the membership.
The wide use and popularity of fuzzy set is related to its
ability to tolerate imprecise and linguistic data. It assigns
each element in the universe of discourse a value repre-
senting its grade of membership in the fuzzy set. This
number represents the certainty or belief this individual
is compatible with the concept represented by the fuzzy
set.
A membership function (MF) is a curve that maps each
element in the input space into a membership value called
the degree of membership. The only restriction on the MF
is that it must vary between 0 and 1. The function itself
may take any shape that is defined and specified by the de-
signer to suit the nature of the problem from the point of
view of simplicity, convenience, speed and efficiency.
One of the most common classes of MFs is the trian-
gular MF. A triangular MF can be specified by three
parameters {a, b, c}. It is expressed as
8
< 0;
> x 6 a; c 6 x;
x
a
lðxÞ ¼ b
a ; a 6 x 6 b; ð1Þ
>
: c
x
; b 6 x 6 c;
c
b
where (a < b < c) are the X coordinates of the three cor-
ners of the underlying MF.
Fuzzy sets representation conforms to the objectives
appearing in our daily linguistic usage such as ‘‘small’’,
‘‘medium’’ or ‘‘large’’. These expressions are called lin-
guistic values and the universe of discourse on which
these values are defined on is called a linguistic variable.
The basic operations on a classical set are union, inter-
section and complement. Corresponding to those basic
operations, Zadeh defined similar operations on fuzzy
sets (Zadeh, 1965).
Fuzzy IF–THEN rules form the rule base in a fuzzy
inference system and they provide a means to encode
conditional propositions. A single IF–THEN rule takes
the form
IF the road is narrow and the rain is heavy THEN . . .
All parts of the antecedent are evaluated simulta-
neously and resolved to a single number using the logi-
cal operators (AND, OR, NOT).
Fuzzy reasoning, known also as approximate reason-
ing, is the process of deriving conclusions from a set of
IF–THEN fuzzy rules using an inference procedure. By
fuzzy reasoning, the truth of the consequent is inferred
from the degree of truth of the antecedent.
The concept of fuzzy set theory, IF–THEN rules, and
fuzzy reasoning together constitute a computing frame-
work usually called fuzzy inference system (FIS). The
structure of a fuzzy inference system consists of three
major parts: a rule base that holds the fuzzy IF–THEN
rules used in the inference process, a database that
302 O. Al-Jarrah, H. Abu-Qdais / Waste Management 26 (2006) 299–306

contains the membership functions that characterize the
fuzzy sets, and a reasoning mechanism that performs the
inference procedure and derives conclusions depending
on a set of rules and facts. The fuzzy inference process
consists of five steps including fuzzification, application
of the fuzzy operators, fuzzy implication, fuzzy aggrega-
tion, and defuzzification. The last step uses a defuzzifica-
tion method to produce a single crisp number for each
output variable (Ros, 1995).
There are three widely used types of fuzzy inference
systems: Mamdani, Sugeno, and Tsukamoto (Mamdani
and Assilian, 1975; Takagi and Sugeno, 1985; Tsukam-
oto, 1979). The basic difference between various models
lies in the representation of the consequents of their fuz-
zy rules. Accordingly, the aggregation and defuzzifica-
tion procedures of the three models are different. In
this paper, the Mamdani model will be utilized in devel-
oping the system, as this is the most suitable model when
encoding experts opinion in which their consequences
are expressed as linguistic variables, which is the case
in this paper.
The Mamdani model was proposed by Mamdani in
1975 to control a steam engine and boiler combination.
It was among the very first control systems built based
on the theory of fuzzy logic (Mamdani and Assilian,
1975). This model is characterized by representing the
consequents of its rules using fuzzy sets. The aggrega-
tion of the outputs of all rules yields a single fuzzy set
(output). A defuzzification process is then performed
to extract a crisp value from the output fuzzy set. For
example, using the centroid defuzzification method
(Ros, 1995), the crisp output of the Mamdani fuzzy
inference system is given by
R
l 0 ðyÞy dy
Def y ¼ RY B . ð2Þ
l 0 ðyÞ dy
Y B
4. Landfill site selection using fuzzy inference
The proposed system utilizes the power of fuzzy
sets in describing uncertainties in the different factors

W0
LS
SHS W1
DGW
DSW W2 Fuzzy
Fuzzy Degree of
DRRA Aggregation Defuz. Suitability
Implication
LC W3
DH
DWG W4
S
DAR

Fuzzy
Rule Base

Fig. 1. Landfill site selection using fuzzy inference system.

Z S M
1 L 1 Z S M L
µ

0.5 0.5

0 0
-14 -10 -5 0 0 20 40 60 80 100
(a) SHC (m/s) (b) LS (%)

Fig. 2. Membership functions on SHC and LS.

 O. Al-Jarrah, H. Abu-Qdais / Waste Management 26 (2006) 299–306 303

1 Z S M L 1 Z S M L

µ
0.5 0.5

0 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 0 50 100 150
(a) DSW (m) (b) DGW (m)

Fig. 3. Membership functions on DSW and DGW.

Z S M L Z S M L
1 1
µ

0.5 0.5

0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 1000 2000 3000 4000
(a) LC (%) (b) DRRA (m)

Fig. 4. Membership functions on LC and DRRA.

1 Z S M L 1 Z S M L
µ

0.5 0.5

0 0
0 5 10 15 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
(a) (b)
DH (Km) DWGS (min)

Fig. 5. Membership functions on DH and DWGS.

involved in landfill siting. Each factor is represented
by a linguistic variable defined over a universe of dis-
course that represents all permissible values. The
expertise of an environmentalist is coded into a fuzzy
rule base, which drives the inference system as shown
in Fig. 1.
The contribution and severity of the various factors
in the site selection may be different. A scoring system
is commonly used to express this variability. The degree
of suitability of a site is expressed as a weighted sum of
all factors. These weights are given judgmentally based
on a consensus of those professionals with expertise in
sanitary landfill siting and on data from the technical
literature. The natural resources are given the highest
impact (27%), topography and geology (25%), and so-
cio-cultural effects (18%). The impact for economy and
safety was chosen such that the land cost is given
(14%) and the others parameters (16%).
304 O. Al-Jarrah, H. Abu-Qdais / Waste Management 26 (2006) 299–306

If DRRA is Z. then DS is D (0.18)

..
F D C B A
1 If DRRA is L then DS is A (0.18)

If LC is Z then
.. DS is A (0.14)
.
µ

0.5 If LC is L then DS is D (0.14)

If DH is Z and DWGS is Z and DAR is Z then DS is B

0
0 20 40 60 80
DS (%)
Fig. 6. Linguistic variables for the degree of landfill site suitability.
Four linguistic values are defined on each linguistic
variable, which are zero (Z), small (S), medium (M),
and large (L) as shown in Figs. 2–5. The Mamdani mod-
el is used in our system as shown in Fig. 1. Five linguistic
values are used on the degree of suitability (DS) as
shown in Fig. 6. These values represent the following
grades A, B, C, D, and F. The rule base consists of
104 rules that describe the various contributions of these
factors on the degree of suitability. According to the
scoring system, we defined five groups of fuzzy rules as
follows:
If LS is Z and SHC .is Z then DS is A (0.25)
..
If LS is L and SHC is L then DS is F (0.25)
If DGW is Z and DSW
.. is Z then DS is F (0.27)
. mendation of the expert is then compared with the
If DGW is L and DSW is L then DS is A (0.27)
(0.16) ..
.
100 If DH is L and DWGS is L and DAR is L then DS is C
(0.16)
The number between the parentheses represents the
weight on the rule. The weight is used in the implica-
tion phase to reshape the membership function
obtained after the application of an implication
operator. In this paper, we have used the minimum
operator as the implication method and the maximum
operator for aggregating the outputs fuzzy sets. The
final grade is given after defuzzification of the aggre-
gated outputs using the centroid method as described
in Eq. (2).
5. Experimental results
Several experiments were conducted to investigate the
performance of the system. In our experiments, we
asked an expert to analyze different sites for suitability
for possible landfill siting. The relevant information rep-
resenting the various factors was provided. The recom-
grade given by our system.

Table 1
Landfill siting grades for different sites
Factor Site I Site II Site III Site IV
Topography and geology
Land slope (%) 7.0 11.0 50.0 25.0
Soil hydraulic conductivity (m/s) 10
12 10
6 10
3 10
10
Natural resources
Depth to ground water from landfill base (m) 120 50 8 100
Distance to surface water bodies (m) 1200 800 180 80
Socio-cultural
Distance to residential, religious and archeological sites (m) 3200 2000 450 1000
Economy and safety
Land cost (% of the highest price) 7.0 15.0 60.0 30.0
Distance from highway (km) 1.5 3.0 12.0 5.0
Distance from waste generation source (driving time) (min) 5.0 15.0 35.0 20.0
Distance from airport runway (km) 7.0 4.0 1.0 1.0
Grade (%) 91.19 53.00 23.33 52.09
 O. Al-Jarrah, H. Abu-Qdais / Waste Management 26 (2006) 299–306
Fig. 7. Location of Al Ghabawi landfill site with respect to the capital city Amman.
In the first experiment, the ability of the system in
grading an excellent site was tested. Table 1 shows the
parameters used for this site (Site I) in the experiment
and the corresponding grade. The grade given by the
system, which was 91.19%, is consistent with the expert
opinion. A lower quality site was selected in the second
experiment (Site II). The system gave this site a 53%
grade, which was also acceptable in terms of the param-
eters of this site as shown in Table 1. The third site (Site
III) was selected with a very low quality as indicated in
Table 1. The grade given by the system was 23.33%,
which clearly indicates that this site is an unacceptable
choice. In the last experiment, a site (Site IV) with a
mixed set of parameters in term of acceptance was se-
lected as shown in Table 1. The system graded this site
with 52.09%. The last experiment clearly shows the util-
ity of the system when presented with conflicting param-
eters. The result for this site is consistent with the
expertÕs preference. To test the ability of the system in
grading existing landfill sites, a test was carried out to
grade the newly operated Al Ghabawi landfill site in
Amman Jordan (Fig. 7). The site factors were used as in-
put to run the system. The grade given to the site was
81%, which indicates that the system is capable of grad-
ing sites during the operational phase.
6. Conclusions
An important element of the landfill siting process is
a technique for evaluating the basic suitability of all
available land for sanitary landfill as an aid in selection
305
of a limited number of sites for more detailed evalua-
tion. The technique should establish criteria to illustrate
the relative suitability of land for sanitary landfilling. In
addition, the technique should be practical, taking into
account the resources available and should explain
clearly and directly the analysis and results in an easily
understandable format.
In this paper, an intelligent system approach for select-
ing a solid waste landfill site was utilized. The system uses
a fuzzy inference system that can encode the expertise of
an environmentalist and it can adapt by adjusting the
knowledge base. Several factors that affect the siting pro-
cess were considered including topography and geology,
natural resources, socio-cultural aspects, and economy
and safety. A scoring system was utilized to represent
the severity of these factors. The proposed system ranks
sites using a scale that ranges from 0% to 100%, with
100% representing the optimal choice. Experimental re-
sults reveal the effectiveness of the system in terms of its
ranking capabilities. The proposed system can be used
as a tool by planners and decision makers in the process
of initial screening to select a suitable landfill site.
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