Construction of a spatial–temporal metabolic path for hazardous waste management based on the fusion of reported data and web text data

Abstract

This study employs mining and fusion of the waste reported data and web text data to construct a spatial–temporal metabolic path for hazardous waste management. According to the reported data, the generation and inventory of organic solvent waste account for a large proportion of hazardous waste; thus, they were selected as the representative waste in the construction of metabolic paths from the generation to the final disposal during 2016 to 2019. Web text data were obtained by a web crawler to identify where waste was produced, stored, and disposed. Based on the matching logic, the reported data and web text data were fused to realize the spatio-temporal expression for the logical metabolic path. The results showed that the generation of organic solvent waste displayed rapid growth, increasing from 17,922 to 22,005 tons between 2016 and 2019. The number of waste production enterprises also showed growth, with most of them disconnected downstream, accounting for an average of 43.84% of the total metabolic paths. The number of metabolic paths representing the complete waste disposal decreased significantly by 23.02% during this period. Most of the waste was transferred outside the Chengdu metropolitan area for final disposal, accounting for an average of 14.90% of the total waste generation. In addition, the contributions to organic solvent waste were identified; the automobile and electronic device manufacturing industries were the major sources. These results provided insight into hazardous waste management, making a call for improvement in the existing management system. • A spatial–temporally metabolic path regarding hazardous waste is constructed. • The path is constructed through the fusion and mining of waste reported data and web text data. • The managerial issues related to the existing waste management system are identified. • Policy implications for hazardous waste management system optimization are proposed.