Abstract
Evaluation of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is a challenging issue because it
involves complex, interrelated criteria and thus calls for proper modeling approaches to clearly identify
the crucial criteria and their interrelationships to initiate more effective strategies for improving MSWM
activities. This paper aims to develop a hierarchical evaluation framework for the MSWM problems with
the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) technique. The proposed hierarchical framework include four
main steps: identifying the interrelationships among criteria, establishing the reachability matrix,
determining the hierarchical levels of criteria, and developing the four-quadrant map. An empirical study
on Taipei metropolitan area is undertaken, in which 18 MSWM criteria under 4 aspects (human
development, natural resources and eco-system, economic, and social) are proposed. Our results show
that the proposed criteria can be successfully constructed into a visual map via the driving and
dependence power analysis (DDPA). Some implications are addressed.