Site Suitability Analysis of a Municipal Solid Waste Management System in Ranchi City Using AHP: A Multi‐Criteria Decision Approach

ABSTRACT In this modern age of industrialization, waste from houses and factories has a major impact on the environment, and its management has become one of the most difficult tasks for the whole world. This study attempts to locate suitable sites for disposing of solid waste using geospatial techniques in Ranchi, Jharkhand. Moreover, as Ranchi is a part of the smart city project, it is important to find new sites for dumping to control the environmental issue that arises due to the increasing pressure of population growth and the rate of human migration. Site selection of solid waste dumping considers several parameters, such as land use, land cover, road, geomorphology, soil, slope, water bodies, forest, and built‐up. The present study has taken a multicriteria decision approach and used the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to delineate the suitable landfill site for the medium‐sized city of Ranchi. The study adopts the overlay analysis operation for several factors and geospatial techniques to perform site suitability analysis. The result shows four classes of suitable dumping sites, where low or restricted area covers 1145.52 km 2 (63.92%), moderately restricted covers 477.74 km 2 (26.65%), whereas about 140 km 2 (7.81%) of the area can be constructed but with restrictions, and 28.79 km 2 (1.60%) of the area is highly recommended for dumping site construction. The site suitability map and the identified four new dumping sites are highly useful to the municipality corporation and decision‐makers to alleviate environmental pollution and human health problems.