Sorting of suitable areas for disposal of construction and demolition waste using GIS and ELECTRE TRI

Inadequate construction and demolition waste disposal create severe environmental impacts in cities when it occurs in an uncontrolled manner. For waste with the possibility of recycling, the appropriate destination would be recycling plants or landfills. In the investigative process, no studies were found that considered the sorting procedure by compensatory and non-compensatory multi-criteria analysis integrated to the Geographic Information System to choose suitable landfills or recycling plants in cities. This study aims to fill this gap with a structured methodology for mapping suitable sites to receive inert waste from small and medium cities. For this, it was considered the identification of relevant criteria and weights definition by Analytic Hierarchy Process method and after performing a sorting procedure by ArcGIS 10.0 software (compensatory aspect) and ELECTRE TRI method (non-compensatory aspect). And then, an aggregate analysis in order to support the decision-making was also developed. An experimental study was carried out with the application of this methodology in a city of the south western of Parana, Brazil, allowing the analysis of criteria such as land use, soil type and slope, as well as distances to urban area, education and health institutions, roads and highways and hydrography network. We combined these data in a multi-criteria analysis to provide an aptitude mapping to identify suitable landfill areas with 5 km², and sorted as low, medium and high aptitude classes by ArcGIS software and ELECTRE TRI method. With all that, it shows to be efficient, providing relevant practical and theoretical implications to this theme.