Seminar - Ali El Hanandeh - Multi-criteria decision making in solid waste management

Wednesday 4 October 2006, 1.10 - 1.50 pm
Civil Engineering Lecture Theatre 3

Abstract
Solid waste management is an area of concern in urban developments. Most recently, it has been brought to light again by issues like global warming, water pollution concerns, social awareness issues, national productivity and landfill space depletion. As a result decision makers are under pressure to find management alternatives that are sustainable. Solid waste management is an area where social, economic, engineering and environmental concerns often meet with conflicting interests. Therefore, solid waste management can be classified as a multi-objective multi-criteria decision making problem. Under such circumstances the selection process is neither simple nor easy. A framework that provides a structured approach for decision making in municipal solid waste management is introduced and demonstrated. The framework integrates LCA method for quantifying environmental issues, multi-objective optimization to construct an efficient frontier based on economic and environmental factors and finally using MCDA methods to select the most appropriate alternative(s). Multiple MCDA methods are used to validate the results.