Summary:

Selection of localizations for municipal landfills belongs to complex multicriteria decision making problems. The paper presents a methodology developed for selecting localizations for municipal landfills based on Geographic Information System (GIS) technique coupled with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Joining these two methods makes possible incorporation of various quantitative and qualitative factors and solving the problem in a holistic way. GIS technique enables to include criteria resulting from the legal directives (so called rule-out criteria) and conducting spatial assessment in view of the area usability for waste deposition. In result we obtain areas suitable for waste deposition (predisposed) and the terrains where any localization of landfills is absolutely prohibited. AHP method was used to select the most suitable localization variant from the set of areas predisposed for waste deposition. For this purpose the structure of the task was presented as a developed hierarchy model with the scale of influence. Construction of the model required a proper selection of criteria and sub-criteria, and the scale of influence of individual sub-criteria on the considered localizations. Owing to the method of its construction the developed multi-criteria model with the scale of influence is a universal one and may be applied also for problems other than landfill localization.