الفهرس 
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Abstract
One of the most serious issues that developing countries confront is a lack of space for waste disposal. In Gharbia Governorate, located in the middle of the Nile Delta in Egypt, suffers from random selection of solid waste disposal sites, which leads to severe environmental problems. Only eight landfills for Municipal solid waste (MSW) are scattered throughout the cities of Gharbia but they do not meet basic scientific and environmental standards. The selection of a landfill site is a complicated procedure that is affected with the number of variables and laws. The purpose of this research is to determine the optimal landfill sites in Gharbia Governorate and to validate the existing landfill sites. In this study, in order to determine the appropriate landfill sites, eleven effective criteria were considered and were categorized into two categories: natural criteria and artificial criteria which included groundwater, surface water, elevation, slope, soil, land use, road, railways, urban area, villages, and power lines. All criteria were divided into sub-criteria and given a rating value ranging from 0 to 10 based on information from literature studies and scientific experts. Four techniques of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) were used: analytical hierarchy procedure (AHP), ratio scale weighting (RSW), straight rank sum (SRS), and Boolean method. While AHP, RSW, and SRS methods are used to determine the relative weights of the criteria, the Boolean method is used to determine the suitable and unsuitable areas. Here, Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) was used to integrate the relative weights of the criteria from three methods (AHP, RSW, and SRS) and the rating values to determine the suitable maps for landfill sites. Then, the suitability maps were divided into four categories (suitable, moderate suitable, low suitable, and unsuitable). Finally, the final suitability map was determined by combining the suitability III Abstract maps of the three methods in which decision makers can select the optimal landfill site. The results showed that a large part of the suitable area (42.30 km2) is located in the northeast of Gharbia Governorate, which represents 72.6% of the total suitable area, while the rest of the suitable area is scattered over the study area. On the other hand, unsuitable areas are concentrated in urban areas, and low suitable areas are in the form of scattered agglomerations above the study area and adjacent to the unsuitable area. The results show that all existing sites for landfill located in unsuitable area, which their location must be changed. Finally appropriate sites for landfill can be suggested from the suitability index map which satisfied the scientific and environmental criteria which were adopted in this study. Finally, GIS and Multi-criteria approach should be incorporated into the process of selecting landfill sites so as to minimize the cost and time involved in the process. A study should be conducted on landfill sites No. (1,3,4,5,6,7 and 8) and impacted negatively on the general health of the population in this region and their impact on the presence of landfill sites near them. Keywords: landfill site; Nile Delta; GIS programming; MCDM systems; AHP; RSW; SRS; Boolean method; criteria weights; suitability map.