Identifying areas under potential risk of illegal construction and demolition waste dumping using GIS tools

• Published in: Waste management (Elmsford) 2018-05, Vol.75, p.22-29
• Main Authors: Seror, Nissim, Portnov, Boris A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0956-053X; 1879-2456
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2018.01.027

•Areas under potentially elevated risk of illegal C&D waste dumping were assessed.•The analysis was performed using multivariate statistical analysis and GIS tools.•Roads, forests and ravines were found to be associated with illegal waste sites.•Map of areas under an elevated risk of potential C&D waste dumping was generated.•The proposed methodology can help law enforcement authorities be more effective. Construction and demolition (C&D) waste, dumped illegally in ravines and open areas, contaminates soil and can cause underground water pollution and forests fires. Yet, effective monitoring of illegal C&D waste dumping and enforcing legislation against the offenders are often a difficult task due to the large size of geographic areas that need to be monitored, and limited human and financial resources available to environmental law enforcement agencies. In this study, we use Geographic Information System (GIS) tools and geo-statistical modelling to identify the areas under potentially elevated risk of illegal C&D waste dumping in the Haifa district of Israel. As our analysis shows, locational factors, significantly associated with the accumulated amount of waste in the existing illegal C&D waste sites, include: distance to the nearest main road, depth of the ravine present at the site (p