Abstract
: Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) poses great challenges to many cities around the world. The challenges are fuelled by population explosions all over the world, especially in the major urban centres, against the backdrop of limited resources to manage wastes efficiently. In this paper, a conceptual and simulated semi-automatic approach to MSWM is considered using the prevalent Global Systems for Mobile Communication (GSM) technology to engage both the waste generators and collectors. This system connects users into a central database where data about their waste bin levels are harnessed. Users are prompted via GSM handsets daily for the level of the waste bin. Waste Collection Vehicles are routed based on the responses while an updatable Reporting Reliability Index (RRI) is computed for each user based on estimate of actual level of waste collected as against the reported level to factor future reporting. With history of collection volume at a location known, forecast is made as to the generated waste level when a customer’s response to prompt is not available. The system is tested on a simulated 30-node housing estate and two dump sites with vehicles routed to optimize distance covered and volume of waste collected. Customers report when prompted with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 for waste levels ranging from empty to full bin fills. Vehicles are routed to collect wastes at locations with a minimum threshold level of 2. Results obtained showed statistically insignificant differences in distribution of means of collection distance covered weekly but 13.31 volume units/km collected with this method compared with 3.08 volume units/km run of fixed routing scheme, at = 0.05. The cost saving potential and environmental benefits of timely waste disposal of this scheme is thus demonstrable.Keywords: Municipal Solid Waste, Waste Management, SMS Gateway, GSM, Reporting Reliability Index.
Highlights
Waste management is a plethora of activities including collection, keeping, treatment and disposal of waste in such a way as to render them harmless to human and animal life as well as the ecology and environment. until it reaches its final destination – a treatment plant or disposal site (UN-HABITAT, 2010)
Others include lack of willingness to pay for waste management services by the waste generators because of the public perception of waste management services as public service to be provided by the government at no cost to the waste generators
The proposed semi-automatic waste management system (WMS) in this work automates the process of waste level reporting at the generation stage to engender informed and optimal waste collection scheduling and vehicle routing
Summary
Waste management is a plethora of activities including collection, keeping, treatment and disposal of waste in such a way as to render them harmless to human and animal life as well as the ecology and environment. until it reaches its final destination – a treatment plant or disposal site (UN-HABITAT, 2010). Most attempts to improve solid waste management in cities have focused on the technical aspects of different means of collection and disposal (Manual, S, 2010). The composition, the density of waste generated in each locality which can assist in infrastructural planning is not known in most cases, lack of the needed political will on the part of the leaders to mention but a few The unplanned and often congested natures of low-income communities with narrow roads which make it difficult for waste collection vehicles to navigate. These has resulted into a behemoth and a haven for rodents, cats and dogs, a situation that can lead to outbreaks of epidemic of unimaginable dimension if not arrested urgently. The work on hand here is a semiautomatic intervention at the process dimension of waste management using customer reports through the GSM in place of smart dust-bins and planning for routing of collection vehicles
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