Designing an effective two-stage, sustainable, and IoT based waste management system

Abstract

In the history of sustainable development, particular attention has been paid to waste management systems (WMS), especially in smart cities. Putting real-world assumptions into practice with real-time waste bins' fill levels has not been considered in previous literature and can be investigated by utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) concept. In this paper, two sub-models are developed using the vehicle routing problem concept. The first sub-model uses modern traceability IoT-based devices to obtain data in real-time, making it possible to identify the threshold waste level (TWL) parameter. The importance of the first sub-model is not only to determine an effective and innovative collection route for achieving sustainable being social and environmental impacts on WMS, but also to consider the priority of visiting bins based on their significance. Both waste separation and transferring them into the recovery value center are considered in the second model, both to maximize the recovery value and minimize visual pollution. The recent and capable meta-heuristic algorithms are utilized and probed to test the proposed problem's accuracy and find the best algorithm for this problem. Finally, in the sensitivity analysis section, different parameters of the problem were investigated. Besides, by defining and analyzing two indices, the best efficiency in using the transport fleet, the optimal amount of traveled distance, and the amount of collected waste can be achieved by setting the TWL between 70 and 75%.