GIS application in the spatial analysis of illegal landfills in big cities: A case study of Belgrade

This paper represents the attempt to map and analyze spatial distribution of illegal landfills in the City of Belgrade. To make this happen the main tasks were to form the geospatial database of illegal landfills in the study area and to analyze the patterns in their spatial distribution. The data on the landfill locations were obtained from the Agency of Environmental Protection of the Republic of Serbia, while the ArcGIS software was used for their spatial analysis. The City of Belgrade, respectively the public utility companies use five landfills, which cover up the area of 89 ha. On the other hand, in the study area there are 223 illegal landfills. The spatial analysis showed two patterns: (1) increasing of the number of illegal landfills with distancing from the city urban center, and (2) increasing of their number with distancing from the municipal centers. This paper also showed that there is landfill clustering, or that their spatial distribution is not random