Forecasting solid waste generation: a Fourier series approach

Abstract

Successful planning of a solid waste management system depends on the accuracy of prediction of solid waste generation. With a continual economic development and increase in the living standards, the demand for goods and services is increasing at an unprecedented rate, resulting in a commensurate increase in per capita waste generation. In order to facilitate informed decision making for an effective solid waste management, we propose a Fourier Series Model to forecast solid waste generation in Kumasi, Ghana. A monthly waste data from 2007 to 2014 was obtained from the solid waste department of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, Ghana. This was used to formulate the Fourier series model for forecasting solid waste. This novel application incorporates the characteristics of the data making them it appropriate for forecasting solid waste. MAPE and RMSE comparison of our proposed model with existing method for forecasting solid waste shows that our method competes favourably well.