Spatial Multicriteria Analysis for Siting Groundwater Polluting Industries

Abstract

Industrialization has led to economic growth but along with it is also responsible for various environmental pollution problems. There are many studies which show that industrial pollution has badly affected the groundwater. Site suitability analysis before sitting industries can be a solution for sustainable industrial development. Therefore the idea of the present study is to utilize spatial multicriteria approach to find out suitable areas for groundwater polluting industries considering environmental as well as economic factors. The study is divided into three steps, environmental suitability analysis, socio-economic suitability analysis and then cross classification of two suitability maps which results in suitable site for groundwater polluting industries. In the suitability analysis, factors maps were standardize using fuzzy membership functions and factor weights were generated using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Further, the factors were aggregated using weighted linear combination (WLC) technique. The result shows that 36.91% of area is unsuitable for industrial sitting and the study area is suitable for medium and low water polluting industries and not suitable for heavy water polluting industries. Finally, it is concluded that spatial multicriteria decision making can be a powerful tool for preliminary Environmental Impact Assessment for sitting industries.

Keywords: Geographical Information System (GIS), site suitability, mutli-criteria analysis, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), groundwater, pollution, industries