Use Of Gis In Solid Waste Management In Kenol Municipality

Abstract

Solid Waste Management is considered as one of the most hazardous environmental problems faced by municipal authorities in developing countries. Various reasons contribute to increase in waste generation rates including rapid urbanization, increasing industrial, commercial and economic development, socio-economic development, and degree of industrialization among others. Kenol Municipality is among the urban areas in Murang'a County that are in dire need of solid waste management facilities. The challenges in solid waste management in the municipality range from reducing generation of waste, separation, change of habits, collection, transport, treatment, reuse and disposal of the waste. The overall objective of this study was to demonstrate how GIS can be used in solid waste management in the Municipality. Specifically, it sought to identify suitable disposal and collection centre sites and to design appropriate routes for transporting waste from the collection centres to the disposal site. To achieve these objectives, GIS and Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) were applied. After carrying out analysis, 36 disposal sites were obtained: 32 sites which were Moderately Suitable occupied a total area of 1499.6Ha and four sites in the Suitable category occupied a total of 107.2Ha. The four suitable disposal sites identified, were further analyzed and Site A was found to be the optimal site due to its size (44.9 Ha) and ease of accessibility. Which means that it can significantly provide some space for future expansion and a buffer for tree planting to serve as barrier for noise, dust and odor screening. Also, a total of 46 collection centres were identified all in the Suitable category and clustered in populated areas which in reality means that these are the waste generation sites. In addition, the appropriate routes were also designed which included optimal and alternative. The optimal route was found to be the one taking the shortest time to complete a trip while an alternative route had the shortest distance but took longest time to complete a trip. It was concluded that the optimization of the routes for collection and transportation of solid waste is a crucial factor of an environmentally friendly and cost effective solid waste management system. The routes and suitable sites obtained through GIS and spatial modeling techniques optimize waste collection and transportation and may provide significant economic and environmental savings through the reduction of travel time, distance, fuel consumption and pollutants emissions.The project recommended that to be able to achieve sustainable solid waste management in fast developing urban areas, GIS and MCDA methods should be applied.