Application of GIS in water resources management of an eco-friendly industrial park : case study : Kampala Industrial and Business Park (KIBP).

Abstract

Traditional industrial parks that are challenged by high individual waste treatment costs or no treatment at all as way of curbing expenses resulting into release of toxic pollutants that end up in water bodies and associated negative impacts, pollution associated problems, on-cost effective infrastructure and other related problems that are an immediate threat to environmental sustainability such an alarming situation calls for establishing eco-friendly industrial parks as an ultimate solution to these environmental problems with suitably located environmental Infrastructure including water treatment plants). weather forecasting stations, storm Water management systems, growth of fauna etc.,

For the case of Kampala Industrial and Business Park (KIBP), which is challenged with discharge of poorly treated effluent from polluting industries with in the industrial park and poor disposal of solid wastes generated resulting into contamination of surface and underground water resources hence threatening their existence and ability to perform present and future ecological functions, furthermore the poor design of the industrial park (establishments in flood zones) has resulted into flooding of industries lying in the flood zones, along River Namanve and polluting of Lake Victoria, the final recipient point.

To address all the above effective and efficient planning and management of water resources is the ultimate solution and this specifically addresses that by provide optimal management. Solutions in regards to siting solid waste-management facilities and other developments with priority given to protection of water resources both surface and underground reserves.

This has been achieved by use of GIS and multicriteria Evaluation to site most suitable locations of a landfill, many factors have been put into consideration that include distance to roads, wetlands, industries, railways, power lines and river Namanve, buffer maps have been developed using standard buffer distances and rasterized layers overlaid using the raster calculator in the restriction model a suitability model has also been developed taking into consideration of slope, land use, and Euclidean distance from roads, where layers have been rasterized and reclassified then later overlaid using weighted overlay tool and Saaty's Analytical Hierarchy Process(AHP), used for weighting the factors above. The final suitability model which delineates the most suitable sites for a land developed was a combination of the suitability model and restriction model were final output layers were both multiplied using the raster calculator to

produce the final suitability map. Flood plain maps have also been delineated basing on the100-. year floods and prospective flood zones mapped out, this has been achieved using a combination of different software like HECGeoHMS, HECHMS, ArcGIS, Hegiras and finally HECRAS.

It has however been found out that about 82% of the entire Industrial park has, been industrialized given the fact 60% of the park was originally a wetland this possess a great threat to the vulnerable ground water reserves and surface water bodies since the risk of contamination is high. Suitable sites located for a landfill could only accommodate a landfill of size less than 10 hectares in a few selected areas of the park beyond that the water resources are at high contamination risk from the land fill furthermore. Most of the industries located along the River Namanve are susceptible to flooding since most lie in the flood zones.

After carrying out this research and analysis on KIBP area, I therefore conclude that its feasible to setup a solid waste management facility on land not. Greater than 12 hectares and all industries lying in the flood zone should vacate the area and allocated new land. These flood zones should however be preserved for flood management and monitoring.