A multiobjective model for the dynamic location of landfills

The passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 in the USA and its subsequent renewals triggered controversies over where potentially hazardous garbage should be deposited. Such controversies originated from decade-long conflicts between the government agency seeking cost savings and the general public seeking safe environments. The controversies will go on without a settlement, unless more systematic and realistic decision-aid tools for locating landfills are developed which consider a multitude of dynamic factors affecting the location decision and then make trade-offs among them. These factors may include garbage collection services for regional communities, the explicit and hidden costs of developing landfills, transporting and disposing garbage, long-term health and safety hazards for neighboring residents and ecosystems, negative impacts on the regional economy, equity concerns and so forth. As an effective decision-aid tool that can incorporate these conflicting factors, this paper develops a dynamic (multiperiod), multiobjective mixed integer programming model. The model is tested in a hypothetical case resembling a real world scenario and the results are interpreted to provide insights into the multiobjective and dynamic nature of the model. Efficient alternatives are generated, using the weighting method, and reduced using a filtering method.