A Multi-Criteria Decision Making Conceptual Approach to Optimal Landfill Monitoring

In this chapter, we introduce a novel conceptual approach to determining an optimal landfill monitoring procedure by using the Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). Selecting an optimal landfill monitoring procedure is identified as a complex and multifold problem encompassing parameters related to conflicting demands. It should result in identifying possible landfill monitoring alternatives that have to comply with predefined relevant criteria and offer landfill operators a powerful tool when raised in front of the problem of selecting the most appropriate monitoring alternative for their particular landfill. A decision having to be delivered in such a multidimensional and complex environment, seeks the utilization of the MCDM theory, in particular when the problem is new and complex, existing experience is insufficient, economic implications are significant. It is justified to define an algorithm due to frequent incidence of the problem and intuition is not an option, all of which is the case for the herein defined problem: determining optimal landfill monitoring procedure