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Applying Fuzzy logic and the point count system to select landfill sites

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Abstract

The treatment of solid waste is currently one of the major environmental problems facing municipalities. Thousands of tonnes of waste are generated each day, requiring a large area for disposal purposes. It is difficult to find suitable areas for the construction of such sanitary landfills as numerous criteria must be met, and landfill sites vary considerably in terms of their sophistication. The selection criteria for landfill sites should be as simple as possible, and with this in mind, we have evaluated a large number of random cases for the suitability of the site for landfill purposes using the recently advocated fuzzy approach. Using the fuzzy classification, we have attempted to develop a simple classification which uses only certain point values for available attributes. A normalized average of such attributes based on the proposed classifier is further evaluated using additionally generated random data sets. The results appear to be encouraging and indicate that the present classifier can be used as a substitute for the fuzzy-based ranking of landfill sites.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IIT Roorkee, Department of Civil Engineering, Roorkee, Uttaranchal, India

    C. S. P. Ojha

  2. IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttaranchal, India

    Manish Kumar Goyal

  3. Solid Waste Management Division, NEERI, Nagpur, India

    Sunil Kumar

Authors
  1. C. S. P. Ojha
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  2. Manish Kumar Goyal
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  3. Sunil Kumar
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Correspondence to Manish Kumar Goyal.

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Ojha, C.S.P., Goyal, M.K. & Kumar, S. Applying Fuzzy logic and the point count system to select landfill sites. Environ Monit Assess 135, 99–106 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-007-9713-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-007-9713-3

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