Remote sensing and GIS applications for municipal waste management

The production of municipal solid waste has increased noticeably during the recent past due to the mounting global population and fast urbanization. Furthermore, its poor management and inappropriate disposal are a global challenge since these have created environmental problems in urban ecosystems. Waste management problems are significantly stalled because of a lack of quality data. This is particularly the case in developing countries where observation infrastructure is weak. Regional waste management strategies involve distributed data, while typical small-scale studies present just point information and in the lack of vital widespread information, the regional studies can't provide dependable results. With the materialization of new techniques such as remote sensing and GIS, regional waste management studies have become easier during the last few decades. Use of these techniques in solid waste management supports in capturing, handling, and transmitting the required information in a prompt and proper manner. These techniques are also useful in acquiring information directly from the remote site at a fairly low cost. This paper provides an overview of remote sensing and GIS techniques used for managing the environmental problems of waste disposal. An indication of the waste disposal problems and its management alongside the ramifications of the analysis is discussed. The background and rationale of the waste disposal problems are detailed. The applications of remote sensing and GIS in waste management modeling are presented and applications of these techniques in diverse case studies worldwide are described. The study revealed that the efficiency of waste management system can be maximized by the proper use of remote sensing and GIS techniques. The study also revealed that these techniques were most commonly used for siting the landfill and waste bin for waste disposal and evaluation of environmental impact of buried waste.