Interval-valued facility location model: An appraisal of municipal solid waste management system

Abstract

This study presents an interval-valued facility location model to find economically best locations for transfer stations under uncertainty. Transfer stations are the vital part of contemporary municipal solid waste management systems and economical siting of transfer stations using developed model lead to a financially sustainable system. Often, the associated uncertainty of these systems cannot be modeled by conventional probabilistic or fuzzy approaches under a data scarce scenario; however, models based on interval analysis are found to be very effective in such cases. A set of univariate and multivariate sensitivity analyses adduces the need of uncertainty analysis for quantification and propagation of uncertainty. The demonstration of model on city of Nashik (India) provides (i) economical feasibility, optimum capacity and economically best locations of transfer stations; and (ii) impact of uncertain parameters on the best locations. The developed model felicitates a convenient decision-making to identify economically best locations of transfer stations under uncertain environment.