Environmental GIS to identify municipalities with high potential of biogas production in Mexico

Currently, Mexico City is facing a growing concern about the production and treatment of urban waste (RSU of its acronym in Spanish), also known as municipal solid waste (MSW), due to the lack of long-term planning and because many landfills (RESA in Spanish) have exceeded their capacity. In addition, finding new sites for landfilling waste is difficult because many studies and analyses from specialists are required. Landfill sites should comply with technical requirements that guarantee environmental protection and public health. These requirements are established in the Mexican environmental standard NOM-083-SEMARNAT- 2003. Additionally, it is desirable that new landfills have the necessary infrastructure to capture and use the biogas generated over the following year because there is an international trend in waste management called the Waste to Energy (WtE) approach in which biogas can be used for electricity or heat generation. This research proposes a methodology to make a system that performs geographic analyses to show potential landfill locations, and the calculation of potential biogas generation to support the municipalities in building a landfill that has the necessary infrastructure to capture, treat and take advantage of the biogas produced by the MSW. The result is a system that displays maps showing potential landfill locations (according to NOM-083- SEMARNAT-2003), through semantic processing, showing the results in a Web system and a mobile application (Android app).