Finding a New Landfill Site

Question

Good day

I'm new to GIS and I'm busy doing some work in ArcGIS Desktop but I've hit a wall. I have to find a new land fill site for the town that I live in. I have to select the landfill site according to specific criteria. The site must:

* be within 10 km from the center of town.
* be within 1 km from major roads.
* not be within urban ares or permanently cultivated areas.
* be at least 15 ha in size, but larger is better.
* Not be within 500 m of a dam.
* not be within conservation areas
* not be near rivers especially on steep slopes (see table 1)

Table 1: Distance from rivers specifications

SlopeMin Distance (m) from Non Perennial Rivers
Min Distance (m) from perennial rivers<=10100300>10200600

These are the data sets that I have available.

File name
DescriptionFormatLandcoverLandcoverShapeLandsatLandsat image of study areaIMGDEMA DEM of the study areaGRIDRoadsAll roads digitized form 1:50 000 topo mapShapeRiversAll rivers digitized form 1:50 000 topo mapShapeRivers_areaAll rivers digitized form 1:50 000 topo mapShapeDamsAll dams digitized form 1:50 000 topo mapShapeCa_locAll local reserves areas digitized form 1:50 000 topo mapShapeCa_cncAll nature reserves digitized form 1:50 000 topo mapShape

So this is what I've done already:

* I've given all the data sets the same projection;
* I've buffered the 10 km
* I've buffered the 1 km
* I've selected all non - urban areas and non-permanent cultivated areas which are 15 ha or bigger from the land cover shape file. 
* I've exported that to a new output layer
* I've buffered the 500 m around all dams
* I've added the conservation area layers
* I used the intersect tool to over lay the layers and now I can see the portions of land (from land cover shape) that have the following criteria:* are within 10 km of the town center
* are within 1 km of major roads
* are not in urban or permanent cultivated areas
* are not within a distance of 500 m of a dam
* are not within conservation areas

I'm not sure if I should have buffered the dams and of that was the best option.

But what I'm actually struggling with is step 7 of the first list. I'm not sure how to tackle this problem.

Could someone please help me? I would really appreciate any help.

Kind Regards

Francois Bekker

NB: if you need more info to help me feel free to contact me on gulu@sun.ac.za then we can perhaps arrange a Skype call.

StevenGraf1 · Answer

You may be looking at a 3D buffer to find distances on a sloped surface.  You can only do this if you have access to 3D analyst.

Also, for landfills, you may want to bring in a soils layer. You don't want all that garbage leaking into your ground water supply so a low permeable area may be necessary.

Steven