Optimal routing for waste collection: A case study in Singapore

To collect and dispose growing amounts of municipal solid waste (MSW) changed to be a hot topic along with the rapid urbanization in past decades. Cities are more and more dependent on the incineration instead of landfilling due to the cost-efficiency and environmental concerns. Considering the limi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: XUE, Weijian, CAO, Kai
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/5416
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6419&context=sis_research
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
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Summary:To collect and dispose growing amounts of municipal solid waste (MSW) changed to be a hot topic along with the rapid urbanization in past decades. Cities are more and more dependent on the incineration instead of landfilling due to the cost-efficiency and environmental concerns. Considering the limited number of incineration plants and complicated situation of transportation in both spatial and temporal dimensions in different cities, the optimal routing for waste collection turns to be meaningful research topic. In this research, the ant colony optimization (ACO)-based multiobjective routing model coupled with min-max model and Dijkstra’s algorithm is proposed to address the question of which route to take from these waste-generating points to the target incineration plant(s) considering travel time, accident probability (black spots), and population exposure, so as to support the routing decision-making. The model is successfully implemented in Singapore and the effectiveness of the model has also been justified. Besides, few limitations of this research have also been discussed, some of which would also be the future directions of our research, especially the design and integration of a web-based routing decision-making support system.