Multi-criteria decision support system for sustainable municipal solid waste management: A case study of Chandigarh, India

IF 4.7 2区环境科学与生态学 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Environmental Development Pub Date : 2025-05-07 DOI:10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101228

Pramod Kumar , Deval Jugraj Singh , Siby John

{"title":"Multi-criteria decision support system for sustainable municipal solid waste management: A case study of Chandigarh, India","authors":"Pramod Kumar , Deval Jugraj Singh , Siby John","doi":"10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101228","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Developing a systematic and sustainable municipal solid waste (MSW) management scheme is a complex process. This demands the active participation of multiple stakeholders (citizens, waste managers, informal sectors and other governing bodies) at different levels of MSW management. It is equally essential to ensure that diverse and often conflicting priorities, such as environmental sustainability, economic feasibility, technological viability, and social acceptance, are effectively balanced. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) models such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) can address these challenges by systematically evaluating various MSW management strategies based on multiple performance indicators. This study proposes an AHP-based decision-support framework to evaluate the existing MSW management practices for Chandigarh city. A survey-driven selection process identified key criteria, including social, economic, environmental, and technical factors. Five MSW management alternatives were assessed using these criteria, with household-level composting and collector-level anaerobic digestion (AD), followed by sanitary landfill disposal, emerging as the most suitable option. The findings provide practical insights for policymakers, advocating for decentralized composting, enhanced infrastructure for AD facilities, and policy incentives to promote sustainable MSW management practices. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the robustness of the ranking results obtained using the proposed AHP framework. Therefore, it is conclusive that the proposed framework ensures data-driven, transparent decision-making efficiency and can be replicated in other urban regions to enhance MSW treatment efficiency and landfill diversion. The findings from the study can serve as a benchmark for future research on integrating dynamic models with alternative MCDA methods to improve decision-making processes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54269,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Development","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101228"},"PeriodicalIF":4.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Environmental Development","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211464525000946","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Developing a systematic and sustainable municipal solid waste (MSW) management scheme is a complex process. This demands the active participation of multiple stakeholders (citizens, waste managers, informal sectors and other governing bodies) at different levels of MSW management. It is equally essential to ensure that diverse and often conflicting priorities, such as environmental sustainability, economic feasibility, technological viability, and social acceptance, are effectively balanced. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) models such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) can address these challenges by systematically evaluating various MSW management strategies based on multiple performance indicators. This study proposes an AHP-based decision-support framework to evaluate the existing MSW management practices for Chandigarh city. A survey-driven selection process identified key criteria, including social, economic, environmental, and technical factors. Five MSW management alternatives were assessed using these criteria, with household-level composting and collector-level anaerobic digestion (AD), followed by sanitary landfill disposal, emerging as the most suitable option. The findings provide practical insights for policymakers, advocating for decentralized composting, enhanced infrastructure for AD facilities, and policy incentives to promote sustainable MSW management practices. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the robustness of the ranking results obtained using the proposed AHP framework. Therefore, it is conclusive that the proposed framework ensures data-driven, transparent decision-making efficiency and can be replicated in other urban regions to enhance MSW treatment efficiency and landfill diversion. The findings from the study can serve as a benchmark for future research on integrating dynamic models with alternative MCDA methods to improve decision-making processes.

查看原文本刊更多论文

城市固体废物可持续管理的多标准决策支持系统：以印度昌迪加尔为例

制定系统和可持续的城市固体废物管理计划是一个复杂的过程。这就要求多个利益攸关方（公民、废物管理者、非正式部门和其他理事机构）积极参与城市固体废物管理的不同层面。同样重要的是，必须确保有效平衡各种经常相互冲突的优先事项，如环境可持续性、经济可行性、技术可行性和社会接受度。多标准决策分析（MCDA）模型，如层次分析法（AHP）可以通过基于多个绩效指标系统地评估各种城市生活垃圾管理策略来解决这些挑战。本研究提出了一个基于层次分析法的决策支持框架来评估昌迪加尔市现有的城市生活垃圾管理实践。调查驱动的选择过程确定了关键标准，包括社会、经济、环境和技术因素。使用这些标准评估了五种城市生活垃圾管理方案，其中家庭级堆肥和收集器级厌氧消化（AD）是最合适的选择，其次是卫生填埋场处置。研究结果为政策制定者提供了实际见解，倡导分散式堆肥，加强垃圾处理设施的基础设施，以及促进可持续城市垃圾管理实践的政策激励。进行敏感性分析，以评估使用提出的AHP框架获得的排名结果的稳健性。因此，可以得出结论，所提出的框架确保了数据驱动、透明的决策效率，并且可以在其他城市地区复制，以提高城市生活垃圾处理效率和垃圾转移。本研究结果可作为未来研究整合动态模型与其他MCDA方法以改善决策过程的基准。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Environmental Development Social Sciences-Geography, Planning and Development

CiteScore

8.40

自引率

1.90%

发文量

审稿时长

74 days

期刊介绍： Environmental Development provides a future oriented, pro-active, authoritative source of information and learning for researchers, postgraduate students, policymakers, and managers, and bridges the gap between fundamental research and the application in management and policy practices. It stimulates the exchange and coupling of traditional scientific knowledge on the environment, with the experiential knowledge among decision makers and other stakeholders and also connects natural sciences and social and behavioral sciences. Environmental Development includes and promotes scientific work from the non-western world, and also strengthens the collaboration between the developed and developing world. Further it links environmental research to broader issues of economic and social-cultural developments, and is intended to shorten the delays between research and publication, while ensuring thorough peer review. Environmental Development also creates a forum for transnational communication, discussion and global action. Environmental Development is open to a broad range of disciplines and authors. The journal welcomes, in particular, contributions from a younger generation of researchers, and papers expanding the frontiers of environmental sciences, pointing at new directions and innovative answers. All submissions to Environmental Development are reviewed using the general criteria of quality, originality, precision, importance of topic and insights, clarity of exposition, which are in keeping with the journal''s aims and scope.