Abstract
Most environmental impact assessments consider a wide range of factors, including socioeconomic, human interest, geoenvironmental, and political issues. Determination of which of these different factors to assign the greatest importance is a difficult task. An introductory overview is presented of the techniques used to analyze the impacts of cesspool system utilization in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The assessment was conducted based on a structured importance weighting methodology. This methodology utilizes a ranked paired-comparison strategy and an unranked paired-comparison strategy. Researchers compared and analyzed 17 potential impacts of the cesspool system using an environmental evaluation system and an unranked decision matrix.