Using GIS to Identify Remediation Areas in Landfills

This paper reports the use of GIS mapping software—ArcMap and ArcInfo Workstation—by the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) as a non-intrusive method of locating and characterizing radioactive waste in a 97-acre landfill to aid in planning cleanup efforts. The fine-scale techniques and methods used offer potential application for other burial sites for which hazards indicate a non-intrusive approach. By converting many boxes of paper shipping records in multiple formats into a relational database linked to spatial data, the INEEL has related the paper history to our current GIS technologies and spatial data layers. The wide breadth of GIS techniques and tools quickly display areas in need of remediation as well as evaluate methods of remediation for specific areas as the site characterization is better understood and early assumptions are refined