Edge Computation Assisted Garbage Monitoring and Alerting System for a Smart City

Abstract

By 2050, the majority of the world’s population will live in cities (urban areas),” predicts the United Nations. If this prediction is true, there will be an increase in societal, environmental, and economic challenges. To overcome these challenges and improve the citizen’s quality of life, the “Smart City” plan is being widely adopted. To summarise, a “Smart City” model helps sustain the city and its economy. An efficient waste management system is vital in converting a city to a “Smart City”. The waste management system includes waste collection, transportation, and disposal. All these processes must be monitored properly to achieve an efficient waste management system. Since the number of cloud computing users is increasing steadily, cloud traffic is expected to quadruple in the next few years. Additionally, traditional cloud computing technology faces serious data security threats and high operational costs. So, storing and computing the waste collection information, status, and details of the garbage bins in the cloud may not be a good idea. Edge computing is used to reduce the burden and overcome the challenges of the cloud. Edge computing is also very close to the data source; this helps reduce latency, operational cost, and bandwidth usage. Overall, edge computing provides a more reliable system. This paper is used for monitoring and alerting the waste collection process using IoT (Internet of Things), edge computing technology. The trash bins’ details and status are stored and computed in the respective edge node. The concerned authorities can view the trash bins’ real-time status; whenever the waste must be collected, an alert message is sent to the concerned authorities.