Environmental site evaluation of waste management facilities embedded into EUGENE model: A multicriteria approach

EUGENE is a sophisticated mixed integer linear programming model developed to help regional decision makers on long-term planning for solid waste management activities. The model removes almost every limitations encountered in other waste management models and contains a large quantity of variables and constraints. The method used to embed waste management environmental parameters in the EUGENE model consists in building global impact index (GII) for all site/facility combinations. First, an environmental and spatial evaluation of waste management facilities over sites is based on qualitative and quantitative criteria measuring biophysical and social impacts. Spatial analysis is carried out by geographical information system routines. Then, a multicriteria analysis ranks all site/facility combinations, according to their global performance based on all criteria. The net flow, computed by the PROMETHEE multicriteria outranking method, is considered as a GII to be embedded into EUGENE. The model objective function is thus modified to minimize total system cost and GII Some practical results obtained for the City of Montreal are discussed. Crown Copyright (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.