A Study on the Waste Incinerator Location Problem in Seoul

서울시 쓰레기 소각장 입지에 관한 연구

Waste disposal problem is one of the most important social welfare indicators in urban area, because the volume of waste generated from urban area is remarkable. So far most waste of Seoul has been disposed at landfills. However, this landifill disposal method is confronted with several difficulties in recent. As public concern on environmental problem increases and autonomy system is settled down, local community people of the landfills refuse to receive the waste produced other places any more. It brought reginal confliction problem between waste sending and receiving by refusing to accept waste from certain region. Furthermore, it is difficult to find another place to fill up the waste, while the existing landfiis is reached at the limit in the near future. In terms of environmental aspects landfill method is not the best way to dispose waste. It contaminates the soil and ground/underground water by leaking water containing many serious pollutants as well as offensive oder. In terms of equity, this waste disposal method is not fair. Environmental pollution causes damage to residence near to the landfills, while the waste produced other places. In order to satisfy the equity aspect, the waste generated a region should be disposed within the region. Incineration of Waste has been provided as the alternative. Government plans to construct waste incinerator in every anatomy, so the waste produced by local community is disposed within their local autonomous area. However, the location decision is not easy, since waste incinerator is one of the facilities to the community people. We can not apply the existing location models for this problem, because they show strong NIMBY phenomenon for the location. The location of waste incinerator should be determined very carefully with consideration of various location factors and criteria. This study proposes a methodology for determining the location of the waste incinerators by utilizing GIS, which is a power research tool for location decision where various geographical factors related. We drive the location factors which should be considered in the determination of waste incinerators. They involve environmental, socio-economic, and institutional factors. In first, we eliminate the area which is located within the environmental location criteria such as slope, fault line, distance to river, and then eliminate ares which is conflict with the social and institutional criteria.