Mohd Sanusi S. Ahamad

Spatial effect of new municipal solid waste landfill siting using different guidelines

Proper implementation of landfill siting with the right regulations and constraints can prevent undesirable long-term effects. Different countries have respective guidelines on criteria for new landfill sites. In this article, we perform a comparative study of municipal solid waste landfill siting criteria stated in the policies and guidelines of eight different constitutional bodies from Malaysia, Australia, India, USA, Europe, China and the Middle East, and the World Bank. Subsequently, a geographic information system (GIS) multi-criteria evaluation model was applied to determine new suitable landfill sites using different criterion parameters using a constraint mapping technique and weighted linear combination. Application of Macro Modeler provided in the GIS-IDRISI Andes software helps in building and executing multi-step models. In addition, the analytic hierarchy process technique was included to determine the criterion weight of the decision maker’s preferences as part of the weighted linear combination procedure. The differences in spatial results of suitable sites obtained signifies that dissimilarity in guideline specifications and requirements will have an effect on the decision-making process.

Markov CA, Multi Regression, and Multiple Decision Making for Modeling Historical Changes in Kirkuk City, Iraq

The cellular automata (CA) model is an important tool in land use change studies. Swift increases in population and long-term expectations of rapid urbanization have led to extensive land use change, and normal living conditions have affected the natural resources of the land. This paper highlights and analyzes the historical urban changes in Kirkuk City, Iraq, considering repeated changes undergone by the state such change as government infrastructures, wars, and economic blockade. In this paper, an integrated model, built-in multi regression model, and multi-criteria evaluation were considered to improve the representation of CA transition rules. Environmental and socioeconomic factors were used to produce Suitable Maps (SMs). These SMs were practicalities to create factor layers and weight usage, rating method process for variance expert decision-making groups, and geographic information systems for the periods 1984, 1990, 2000, and 2010. The roots of the equation (R2) values are compared and these values are chosen to produce a good model of suitable maps. The approach used in this study provides a mechanism for monitoring suitability maps in Kirkuk. Furthermore, the model Markov CA is implemented and evaluated. The results indicate that the model, its related concepts performs sufficiency

Statistical evaluation of pre-selection criteria for industrialized building system (IBS)

AbstractThe Malaysian government has endorsed the use of an industrialized building system (IBS) in domestic projects. These have shifted the focus of the nations construction industry towards mass production and modular products. A proper study on site selection criteria for new IBS precast manufacturing sites has now become essential. The preliminary study in this research determines the IBS precast manufacturing site selection criteria from literature reviews. Questionnaires pertaining to IBS acceptance and preference criteria were send to manufacturers, policymakers, academicians and contractors. The outcome analyses the respondents’ view towards 15 site selection criteria. The result from the ANOVA statistical test indicates that most respondents agreed with the selected criteria except political and regulation criteria, urban requirement criteria, and personal criteria. However, there is a significant difference within the opinions of the contractors and manufacturers sector. Likewise, the mean ran...

The Industrialized Building System (IBS) Survey Report 2008--Educating the Malaysian Construction Industry

The IBS Survey report 2008 continues a practice that began in 2003. The first report was published in 2003 followed by in 2005 and recently in 2008. It records recent trends in selected areas that reflect the Malaysias achievement of IBS usage in the building construction industry. Due to dynamic economic and technological changes, IBS usage reports have been increasingly important. The design of quantitative survey in IBS acceptance questionnaire design is based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and verified the reliability of questionnaire design by alpha-Cronbach. The result of alpha-Cronbach on IBS acceptance questionnaire is 0.787 which is round out to 0.8. The re-arrangements of items in the questionnaire design and the validity of the questionnaire has been checked and found to be valid. The awareness of using IBS in the construction industry in Malaysia has been successfully measured based on the IBS actual use, perceived ease of IBS use and perceived IBS usefulness with a scoring of alpha-Cronbach 0.861, 0.744 and 0.853 respectively.

A Comprehensive Review of Environmental, Physical and Socio-Economic (EPSE) Criteria for Spatial Site Selection of Landfills in Malaysia

Location of municipal solid waste landfills in Malaysia has been attributed to causing bad odour, dust, litter, unattractive neighbourhoods, groundwater contamination, hazardous waste pollution and etc. Therefore, proper selection criteria are very important in preliminary siting of new landfill to avoid undesirable long-term effects. This article presents a comprehensive review of landfill spatial siting criteria and their frequency of occurrence (ranked order) found in literatures. The highest ranked criterion is the surface water and the lowest is climate/rainfall density. The dissimilarity in the criteria is found to be specifically influenced by published guidelines or policies from respective countries. In addition, group ranking of spatial criteria from frequency study made on Malaysian local literatures shows that wind factor and infrastructure (utilities) has never been considered in landfill site selection process here. These factors cannot be ignored because enhancing the condition of social, economic and environmental efficiency is part of promoting sustainable development. Subsequently, a benchmarking process of common environmental, physical and socio-economic (EPSE) criteria made with Malaysian landfill siting guideline; National Strategic Plan for Solid Waste Management and Environmental Impact Assessment Guidelines for Municipal Solid Waste and Sewage Treatment and Disposal Project. The bench mark process is useful for research references and its uniformity provides efficient site selection process in solid waste management.

Simulating and monitoring future land-use trends using CA-Markov and LCM models

Simulating and monitoring future land-use trends is one of the major challenges for researchers, decision makers, and local authorities in terms of data, methods, and models that should be used to create a realistic and sustainable land-use planning process. This study aims to use spatio-temporal data and models to generate realistic simulation and assessment of future land-use trends in Seremban, Malaysia. For this purpose, four land-use maps of 1984, 1990, 2000, and 2010 were used. The CA-Markov model was used to simulate future land-use change of 2020 and 2030 in Seremban. After that, a Land Change Modeler (LCM) was used to assess and monitor future land-use patterns. The results confirm that the agriculture area will be affected by urban uses in the next decade in Seremban. This increase in urban uses is due to the impact of the steady increase in economic and demographic development. These results indicate the necessity to create new policies in the city to protect the sustainability of land uses in Seremban.

Multiple criteria landfill site selection method incorporating the NIMBY factors

Waste management and disposal issues one way or another need to be resolved correctly. Today, every developing country is facing the very common question of finding the best suitable site for a landfill. Relying on the technical factors alone would not solve the problem, but the best suitable sites for landfill need to consider the Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) policy in resisting the pressure from unwanted development within the neighborhood or town. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to propose a sustainable approach in finding and determining the best landfill site using GIS. A spatial analytical study is presented by applying various criteria derived from several types of spatial data available in the search for the most suitable landfill site in three (3) districts of Kuala Muda, Kulim and Baling, in Kedah. The results of the analysis have not only satisfied the technical factors but have also put into consideration the public opposition to the NIMBY issues.

Quantitative workflow based on NN for weighting criteria in landfill suitability mapping

Our study aims to introduce a new quantitative workflow that integrates neural networks (NNs) and multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Existing MCDA workflows reveal a number of drawbacks, because of the reliance on human knowledge in the weighting stage. Thus, new workflow presented to form suitability maps at the regional scale for solid waste planning based on NNs. A feed-forward neural network employed in the workflow. A total of 34 criteria were pre-processed to establish the input dataset for NN modelling. The final learned network used to acquire the weights of the criteria. Accuracies of 95.2% and 93.2% achieved for the training dataset and testing dataset, respectively. The workflow was found to be capable of reducing human interference to generate highly reliable maps. The proposed workflow reveals the applicability of NN in generating landfill suitability maps and the feasibility of integrating them with existing MCDA workflows.

Framework for developing a spatial walkability index (SWI) for the light-rail transit (LRT) stations in Kuala Lumpur city centre using analytical network process (ANP) and GIS

In support to the nation’s goal of developing a liveable city, Malaysian government aims to improve the mobility in Kuala Lumpur by providing good quality transit services across the city. However, the public starts to demand for more than just a connectivity between two points. They want their transit journey to be comfortable and pleasant from the very first mile. The key here is the first and last mile (FLM) of the transit service which defines their journey to access the station itself. The question is, does the existing transit services’ FLM satisfy public’s needs? Therefore, many studies had emerged in attempt to assess the pedestrian-friendliness. While most of them did base on the pedestrian’s perceptions, there were also studies that spatially measured the connectivity and accessibility to various landuses and point of interests. While both can be a good method, their integration could actually produce a better assessment. However, till date, only a few studies had attempted to do so. This paper proposes a framework to develop a Spatial Walkability Index (SWI) by integrating a multicriteria evaluation technique, Analytical Network Process (ANP) and network analysis on geographical information system (GIS) platform. First, ANP will aggregate the degree of importance for each walkability criteria based on the pedestrian’s perceptions. Then, the network analysis will use the weighted criteria as attributes to find the walkable routes within half mile radius from each station. The index will be calculated by rationing the total length of walkable routes in respect to the available footpath. The final outcome is a percentage of walkable FLM transit routes for each station which will be named as the SWI. It is expected that the developed framework can be applied in other cities across the globe. It can also be improvised to suit the demand and purpose there.In support to the nation’s goal of developing a liveable city, Malaysian government aims to improve the mobility in Kuala Lumpur by providing good quality transit services across the city. However, the public starts to demand for more than just a connectivity between two points. They want their transit journey to be comfortable and pleasant from the very first mile. The key here is the first and last mile (FLM) of the transit service which defines their journey to access the station itself. The question is, does the existing transit services’ FLM satisfy public’s needs? Therefore, many studies had emerged in attempt to assess the pedestrian-friendliness. While most of them did base on the pedestrian’s perceptions, there were also studies that spatially measured the connectivity and accessibility to various landuses and point of interests. While both can be a good method, their integration could actually produce a better assessment. However, till date, only a few studies had attempted to do so. This paper ...

Automating an integrated spatial data-mining model for landfill site selection

An integrated programming environment represents a robust approach to building a valid model for landfill site selection. One of the main challenges in the integrated model is the complicated processing and modelling due to the programming stages and several limitations. An automation process helps avoid the limitations and improve the interoperability between integrated programming environments. This work targets the automation of a spatial data-mining model for landfill site selection by integrating between spatial programming environment (Python-ArcGIS) and non-spatial environment (MATLAB). The model was constructed using neural networks and is divided into nine stages distributed between Matlab and Python-ArcGIS. A case study was taken from the north part of Peninsular Malaysia. 22 criteria were selected to utilise as input data and to build the training and testing datasets. The outcomes show a high-performance accuracy percentage of 98.2% in the testing dataset using 10-fold cross validation. The au...