GEO-SPATIAL ASSESSMENT OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL SITES IN KANO METROPOLIS, NIGERIA

Abstract

Solid waste dumping is a serious problem in the urban environment because most solid wastes are not dumped in suitable areas. Kano metropolis is experiencing the problem of solid waste suitable disposal site identification. The study employed the potentials of Remote Sensing, GIS and MCDA for efficient and effective management of solid wastes in Kano metropolis. The study assessed the spatial distribution of the existing municipal solid waste disposal sites, identified the essential factors to be considered for selecting suitable municipal solid waste disposal sites and determined the suitability of the sites using MCDA. Primary and Secondary data sets were used. The primary data were the fieldwork GPS observations of the existing dump sites and other point of interest. The secondary data included Landsat 8 image of 2016, ASTER image of 2016, the QuickBird image of 2012, the geological map of 2006 and soil map of 1997 as well as the administrative map covering the study area. RS, GIS and MCDA methods were used to process the data sets. Pairwise comparison matrix under AHP was used to determine the weight for each of the factors. Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE) module for Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) of overlay analysis was used to overlay all the maps to provide the final suitability map. The results for site selection of solid waste dumping sites in the study area indicated that, suitable area occupied 15.35% of the total study area and ranked (1), moderately suitable occupied the largest portion with about 62.63% of the total study area and ranked (2), unsuitable occupied 22.02% of the total study area and ranked (3) respectively. The study has demonstrated the powerful of Remote Sensing, Geographical Information System and Multi Criteria Decision Analysis in the selection of suitable sites for solid waste dumping in an urban environment.