Identification and Assessment of Solid Waste in Open Dumpsites Using Remote Sensing Datasets

Abstract

Solid waste management is an unavoidable activity for every municipality and the magnitude of the problem has increased manifold due to logarithmic expansion of the urban and peri-urban areas. The local municipality is primarily responsible for waste management and their negligence is inviting a variety of environmental hazards in and around cities which can result in the spread of various epidemics threatening human lives. Developing countries, in partic-ular, are not fulfilling this responsibility in properly disposing of waste and providing any kind of safeguard against the environmental pollution caused by the open dumping. As a result, solid waste management has become extremely essential in the present scenario. Mod-ern scientific tools, techniques, and state of the art technology can be utilized for providing solutions for proper waste management. This research work emphasizes the development of a method that can be used for the identification of solid waste in open dumps using satellite images and digital maps along with GIS, surveying, and mapping techniques to quantify solid waste in both old and recently operating dumpsites for its quick and efficient management. Remotely existing dumpsites identification is a complex and time-consuming process. The present study aims to identify the quantity of placed solid waste in open dumpsites using satellite images. For this purpose, three sites located in I-12, Misriyal road Bhatta dumpsite, and Losar dumpsites in twin cities were tested. For identification purpose, supervised classi-fication and NDVI were applied on the Sentinel-2 satellite images which confirmed the pres-ence of solid waste in all the sites. Spectral signatures for different land covers were applied to identify and differentiate solid waste in all dumpsites by establishing a new formula termed as Normalized Difference Solid Waste Index (NDSWI). After testing on these sites, it was possible to calculate occupancy of sites close to 81 % for I-12 dumpsite, Misriyal dumpsite up to 81%, and Rawat dumpsite as 60% of the existing area. Waste volume in each dumpsite was calculated using AutoCAD software in Eagle point. Data analysis results indicated that the I-12 dumpsite has a total volume of 1,34 048 Cubic meters, Misriyal dumpsite has 14,393 Cubic Meters, and Rawat dumpsite has 4,19 245 Cubic Meters of solid waste. This method can help municipal authorities to plan to allocate resources for the management of such open and unattended dumpsites.