Application of Geographic Information System in Solid Waste Management

The application of geographic information systems (GIS) to solid waste management (SWM) has been widely adopted in many cities around the world. Planning a sustainable waste management approach is complex, tedious, and time-consuming, and decision-makers are frequently subjected to conflicting factors. GIS has a crucial role in simplifying and facilitating the implementation of sustainable SWM. It is a powerful tool that can assist in minimizing value conflicts among preference and interest parties by providing better information. In this chapter, the basic principles of how GIS is utilized in SWM planning are discussed. The first few sections deal with sustainable SWM planning, its challenges, and problems with the poor performance of its planning. Furthermore, the principles of GIS, how it evolved in SWM, and its integration with multi-criteria evaluation were discussed. The final sections deal with the application of GIS in waste collection optimization and waste disposal planning. The primary aim of this chapter is, therefore, to aid decision-makers in the field so that they can apply it to the daily challenges of SWM.