A decision aided system for sustainable waste management

Abstract

Nowadays, sustainable development has increasingly drawing public attention due to environmental, economic and social reasons. To pursue a more competitive and sustainable society needs greater concentration on waste management. However, waste management is a worldwide challenge, because several interactive influencing factors, i.e., costs, risks, equity, etc., and the characteristics of different regions have to be simultaneously taken into consideration. The optimal solution for one influencing factor is usually not a good choice for another. Therefore, it is highly preferred to develop a sophisticated system analysing tool for managing those interactive influencing factors as well as the characteristics of different waste management systems in an efficient and sustainable manner. In this paper, a decision aided system based upon multi-objective programming is proposed for addressing the optimal trade-off among costs, risks and sustainability of waste management system from long-term perspective. A theoretical framework of sustainable waste management is first established, and the mathematical model as well as the computation method is then formulated accordingly. To present the application of this model, an illustrative calculation is performed as well, and the model computation in this paper is done by using programming language in a professional optimization software Lingo 13.0.