Determining rural areas vulnerable to illegal dumping using GIS techniques. Case study: Neamț county, Romania

The paper aims to mapping the potential vulnerable areas to illegal dumping of household waste from rural areas in the extra- Carpathian region of Neamț County. These areas are ordinary in the proximity of built-up areas and buffers areas of 1km were delimited for every locality. Based on various map layers in vector formats ( land use, rivers, buil-up areas, roads etc) an assessment method is performed to highlight the potential areas vulnerable to illegal dumping inside these buffer areas at local scale. The results are corelated to field observations and current situation of waste management systems. The maps outline local disparities due to various geographical conditions of county. This approach is a necesary tool in EIA studies particularly for rural waste management systems at local and regional scale which are less studied in current literature than urban areas.