International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013 1

ISSN 2250-3153

Application of GIS in Solid Waste Management for

Coimbatore City
B.Shoba’, Dr.K.Rasappan”
‟
Assistant professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology, Coimbatore-641010
”
Associate professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore-641014.

Abstract- Solid waste management is the one of the major been a significant increase in solid waste generation in India over
problem faced by today‟s world. There is an increase in the years from 100 gm per person per day in small towns to 500
commercial, residential and infrastructure development due to grams per persons per day in large towns. Presently most of the
the population growth and it leads to negative impact on the municipal solid waste in India is being disposed unscientifically
environment. Urban solid waste management is considered as (Akolkar, A.B; 2005). Generally municipal solid waste is
one of the most tedious environmental problems facing by collected and deposited in sanitary landfill, such unscientific
municipal authorities in developing countries. Rapid urbanization disposal attract birds, rodents and fleas to the waste dumping site
coupled with increasing industrial, commercial and economic and create unhygienic conditions (Suchitra, et al). The
development, have given rise to an increased generation of degradation of the solid waste results in the emission of carbon
various types of waste. The amount of waste generation rates is dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and other trace gases.
coupled with socio-economic development, degree of Municipal solid waste management is one of the major
industrialisation and climate. Generally, the greater the economic problems that city planners face all over the world. The problem
growth and higher the percentage of urban population, the greater is especially severe in most developing country cities where
amount of solid waste is produced. In recent years, the increased urbanization, poor planning and lack of adequate
management of solid waste continues to be one of the major resources contribute to the poor state of municipal solid waste
issues facing municipal planners due to increased population management (Obirih-Opareh & Post, 2002; Mato, 1999; Doan,
levels. Planners are thus forced to consider alternate and 1998; Mwanthi et al., 1997). There is a considerable amount of
available means of disposal, especially by minimizing damage to disposal of waste without proper segregation, leading to both
the ecosystem and human population. GIS has proved to be a economic and environment loss. There is a tremendous amount
boon to such planners by visualizing the real solid waste of loss in terms of environmental degradation, health hazards and
situations and facilitating route analysis through mapping. Based economic descend due to direct disposal of waste. It is better to
on the above focus, the present study focuses mapping the waste segregate the waste at the initial stages of generation rather than
generation of Coimbatore urban area and on suggesting going for a later option, which is inconvenient and expensive.
convenient and administratively transparent solutions to the There has to be appropriate planning for proper waste
waste disposal problem. management by means of analysis of the waste situation of the
Coimbatore urban is located in the extreme west of Tamil area.
Nadu. The area covers 105.6 Sq. km with a population of The environment is heading towards a potential risk due to
1026219. The total waste generated from the study area is 749 unsustainable waste disposal. It is a sensitive issue, which
tonnes. Solid waste generation data and population data were concerns about serious environmental problems in today‟s world.
collected from each ward (total number of wards are 72) and The present situation of direct dumping of the waste without
linked to the Coimbatore urban map through GIS. Analysis proper inspection and separation leaves a serious impact of
through maps was performed to identify the areas with increased environmental pollution causing a tremendous growth in health
solid waste generation on comparison with the local population. related problems. Domestic, industrial and other wastes, whether
they are low or medium level wastes, they are causing
Index Terms- Solid Waste Management, GIS, Thematic environmental pollution and have become perennial problems for
mapping, Population distribution, Waste generation. mankind.
Most urban areas in the country are plagued by acute
problems related to solid waste management. It is estimated that
I. INTRODUCTION about 100000 metric tones (MT) of solid waste is generated
everyday in the country. Per capita waste generation in major
T he rapid growth of population and urbanization decreases the
non renewable resources and disposal of effluent and toxic
waste indiscriminately, are the major environmental issues
cities ranges from 0.12 kg to 0.6 kg as per the data from National
Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI). The
posing threats to the existence of human being (Allen et al; collection efficiency ranges from 50 to 90% only, leaving the
1997). The most common problems associated with improper balance unattended. It is estimated that the urban local bodies
management of solid waste include diseases transmission, fire spend about Rs. 500 to Rs. 1500 per tone on solid waste for
hazards, odor nuisance, atmospheric and water pollution, collection, transportation, treatment and disposal. About 60 to
aesthetic nuisance and economic losses (Jilani et al). There has 70% of this amount is spent on collection, 20 to 30% on
transportation and less than 5% on final disposal of waste.

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International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013 2
ISSN 2250-3153

Therefore waste collection must be regarded as an important IV. METHODOLOGY

issue in order to increase the efficiency of waste management. An inventory questionnaire seeking available data on solid
The population of urban India was 285 million as per 2001 waste generation, collection, treatment and disposal was prepared
census, which accounts for 27 per percent of the total population. and used to collect information from officials of Coimbatore
The TATA Energy Research Institute has estimated that the Corporation. The data thus obtained were compiled and
waste generation will exceed 260 million tons by 2047 which processed to assess the adequacy of data for strategic planning of
speaks volumes of the problems that urban areas are going to solid waste management.
face in coming decades in managing their waste.
Corporation carries out detailed study of the existing A. Data Entry
situation of solid waste management in Coimbatore. Municipal The spatial data and attribute data is entered into a data
Corporation does not do any treatment or scientific disposal of base to create maps and analysis by Arc view GIS 3.2a software.
waste. Private sector has come forward and set up a very small This includes photos, ward boundaries, quantity of waste, etc.
plant, which takes care of only 3% of city's waste. Thus 97% of
the waste is not treated at all and disposed of unscientifically at B. Mapping Technique
the landfill. The situation of landfill is pathetic. The entire waste, The Coimbatore Corporation map was obtained from the
which is over 700 MTs a day, is disposed of haphazardly at the District Town Planning office. The details were identified using
landfill. The waste is neither spread nor covered. It is allowed to the geographical coordinates. The map was scanned using the HP
decay on site. Over 500000 MTs of waste is disposed of at Precision scan jet 5200c at 600dpi and the scanned images were
Vellalore landfill unscientifically during many years. This project stored as JPEG files, which were edited wherever necessary,
used to identify the waste generation pattern for Coimbatore using MS Photo Editor. Scanning results in the conversion of the
corporation limit. image into an array of pixels, thereby producing an image in the
raster format. A raster file is an image in a series of dots called
pixels or picture element that are arranged in rows and columns
II. GIS in a matrix format.
A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computer The raster images were opened in Arc view GIS 3.2a as a
tool for capturing, storing, querying, analyzing and displaying raster layer using JPEG interchange format. Later this image was
spatial data from the real world for a particular set of purposes. projected using projection of geographic latitude and longitude.
This technique is used to generate optimal route for collecting Registration and Transformation was done to convert the image
solid waste. GIS is a tool that not only reduces time and cost of to real world coordinates. There are two types of transformation
the site selection, but also provide a digital data bank for future techniques, where the first one involves the X and Y co-ordinates
monitoring program of the site. Therefore, objective of the recorded in Notepad or dbase being opened in Arc View. The
present study are to estimate the ward wise per capita solid waste option “Add Table” presents in Arc View adds the X, Y
generation and to prepare a distribution map of waste generation coordinates in the Notepad or dbase to the map, out of which the
in the urban limit of Coimbatore. points were created. The created points were coordinated to that
of the raster layer.
Similar features to that of the points were identified in the
III. STUDY AREA raster layer and a source point was selected in the raster map.
Using that, the destination point was given to the text / dbf map.
Coimbatore known as „The Manchester of South India‟ is
the district head quarters of Coimbatore district. It is the second The raster later was thus assigned the real world coordinated or
largest city in Tamil Nadu and houses numerous textile mills and the ground control points of the study area. On completion of the
transformation with the above method, over the raster layer, a
small scale engineering units. In the year 1866, Coimbatore was
new layer is digitized with special points. The digitized layer is
constituted as a Municipal Town with an area of 10.88 sq. kms.
transformed using the method similar to the first method.
The Coimbatore Corporation was upgraded from special grade
Once the map is transformed, the line tool was used to
Municipality to corporation in the year 1981 and spreads over an
area of 105.60 sq. kms. digitize the map. Digitizing is a method to convert raster layer to
vector. A specific tool like point, line or polygon was selected
and digitized over the map. Automatically, an Attribute table
A. Population density
with records for each polygon was created by the platform. Each
The density of population is increasing from year to year
line was given an ID and additional fields were added to enter
and the area has remained unchanged. The collected average
population data have been used to calculate the population records such as average waste generation per day, method of
density of the area, based on population/total area (sq. km). collection etc., the entire layer was saved as a shape file.
Using the above, a population distribution map is prepared
C. Thematic Mapping
thematically to identify areas based on population. Natural break
Thematic maps show the distribution pattern of a particular
classifier is used to classify the population into six classes.
theme objective. Thematic mapping involves data classification
methods, which is known as the most common method for
manipulation. Generally, six data classification methods are
available: equal interval, equal area, standard deviation, means,
natural break and user defined. Equal interval uses a constant

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International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013 3
ISSN 2250-3153

class interval in classification. Equal frequency also called as The details of the sanitary workers of the wards was
quantile, divides the total number of data values by the number obtained from the zonal offices and attributed into the existing
of classes and ensures that each class contains the same number ward map. Based on this, the distribution of the ward workers
of data values. Equal area divides the map area by the number of was prepared using natural break classification into six classes. A
classes and ensures that each class contains the equal proportions relationship was identified between the waste generation and
of area. Mean and standard deviation sets the class breaks at the workers. Workers distribution is high in the wards where the
units of standard deviation above and below the mean. The waste generation is more as shown in Map 4.
method of natural breaks uses a computing algorithm to
minimize the difference between data values in the same class
and to maximize difference between classes. For the present The zonal ward map of Coimbatore corporation
study, natural break classification techniques was used to classify 77°00'
77

the waste generation for thematic mapping. W

N

65
72

V. RESULTS 60 61 62
63
64
66
70 71
3

67 68 1
69 2
17

The city is decentralized into four administrative zones, 59

57
34
33

31
32 30 18
29
19 16
10
9 4
58 49 35 28 20

namely North, South, East and West. Each zone is headed by an 50

15 East zone

11°00'

11°00'
21
51 36
48 27 26 22 14 11
8
5
North zone

11
11
52 46 47 37 South zone
assistant commissioner who is delegated with adequate powers to 55
56
53
42
45
44 38
43 4140
39
25

24
23

7
6 West zone
13 Urban
discharge his functions effectively. Each zone consists of 18 54 12
Boundary

wards. The ward administration is being supervised by junior

engineers and sanitary inspectors who are also delegated with
some powers to discharge his functions at the ward level. The
77

distribution of wards in Coimbatore urban is shown in Map 1. 77°00' 6 0 6 Kilometers

The ward number of Coimbatore Corporation is shown in the

map. Map. 1
A Thematic map of population density was prepared for
the ward wise population density for Coimbatore Corporation as
shown in Map 2. To arrive at the population density values, the Thematic map of population density in
Coimbatore corporation (2007)
formula was adopted 77°00'
77
N

W E

Population Density = No of persons / Area of ward S

(sq.km)
Population density

The Arc view calculator was used to obtain the population 2493 - 6057
6058 - 9933
11°00'

11°00'
9934 - 14913
density value, which was attributed in the existing table. The

11
11

14914 - 20208
20209 - 28726
population density values were further used for thematic 28727 - 60991

mapping.
More than 50% of the wards (41 wards) are identified with
density between 9934 -28727 persons per sq.km. These wards 77

are identified are the potential wards for development and high 77°00' 6 6 Kilometers

growth rate is attributed to these wards. About 20 wards are

observed with densities ranging upto 9933 Persons/sq.km. Low Map. 2
densities wards are attributed to location along the corporation
Thematic map of per capita solid waste generation in
periphery, presence of water bodies, hillocks, Industrial units or Coimbatore corporation

educational institutes 77°00'

77

Based on population of each ward and the waste W E

generation of each ward using this per capita waste generation

map were prepared. Per capita waste generation is calculated
per capita generation
using Per capita solid waste generation = (Total weight of solid in kg/day
0.21 - 0.38
waste generated per day) / (Population served) 0.38 - 0.55
11°00'

11°00'

0.55 - 0.75
For each ward area, this method was used to prepare a
11
11

0.75 - 0.95
0.95 - 1.37
thematic map of per capita waste generation in Coimbatore 1.37 - 2.28

urban. Natural breaks classification method was used to classify

the area based on high per capita waste generation wards. From
the result of thematic mapping, it is observed that out of 72 77

wards in Coimbatore urban only 4 wards namely 48,49,50,51 are 77°00' 6 6 Kilometers

highly waste generated areas in the range of 1.37 to 2.28

kg/person/day as shown in Map 3. Map. 3

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International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013 4
ISSN 2250-3153

REFERENCES
Map of workers distribution in Coimbatore corporation
[1] Akolkar .AB., 2005. Status of Solid Waste Management in India,
77°00'
77
Implementation Status of Municipal Solid Wastes, Management and
N
Handling Rules 2000, Central Pollution Control Board, New Delhi.
W E

S [2] Allen AR, Dillon AM, O‟Brien M.,1997. Approaches to landfill site
selection in Ireland. Engineering Geology and the Environment. Balkema,
Rotterdam pp 15691574.
Ward wise workers
distribution [3] Doan, P.L. (1998). Institutionalizing household waste collection: the urban
20 - 25 environmental management project in Cote d'Ivoire. Habitat International,
26 - 33
22(1), 27-39.
11°00'

11°00'
34 - 40

11
11

41 - 50
51 - 72 [4] Jilani T,2002 .State of Solid Waste Management in Khulna City.
Environmental Science Discipline, Khulna University Khulna, pp. 2585
[5] Mato, R.R.A.M. (1999). Environmental implications involving the
establishment of sanitary landfills in five municipalities in Tanzania: the
case of Tanga municipality. Resources,Conservation and Recysling, 25, 1-
77
16.
77°00' 6 6 Kilometers

[6] Mwanthi, M.A., Nyabola, L.O., & Tenambergen, E.D. (1997). The present
and future status of municipal solid waste management in Nairobi.
Map. 4 International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 7, 345-353.
[7] Obirih-Opareh, N., & Post, J. (2002). Quality assessment of public and
private modes of solid waste collection in Accra, Ghana. Habitat
International, 26, 95-112.
VI. CONCLUSION
[8] Suchitra M, 2007. Outside: Burnt or buried, garbage needs land. Down To
The municipal officer involved in the solid waste Earth, 15 March, pp. 22–24.
management should be clear about the function and their role in
terms of managing the cities effectively with the help of GIS
system. These Thematic maps will help officers to identify and AUTHORS
monitoring the more waste generated wards. First Author – B.Shoba, Assistant professor, Department of
Promoting waste markets and recycling would also create
Civil Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology,
awareness to reduce the total volume of waste at the landfill. Coimbatore-641010., Email: shobadiwakar@gmail.com
There is a need to improve the data system of solid waste for the Second Author – Dr.K.Rasappan, Associate professor,
monitoring and management to support environmental reports Department of Civil Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of
has been improved Technology, Coimbatore-641014.

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