IoT-Enabled Smart Waste Management Systems for Smart Cities: A Systematic Review

Abstract

With urbanization, rising income and consumption, the production of waste increases. One of the most important directions in the field of sustainable development is the design and implementation of monitoring and management systems for waste collection and removal. Smart waste management (SWM) involves for example collection and analytics of data from sensors on smart garbage bins (SGBs), management of waste trucks and urban infrastructure; planning and optimization of waste truck routes; etc. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing research in the field of systems, applications, and approaches vis-à-vis the collection and processing of solid waste in SWM systems. To achieve this objective, we performed a systematic literature review. This study consists of 173 primary studies selected for analysis and data extraction from the 3,732 initially retrieved studies from 5 databases. We 1) identified the main approaches and services that are applied in the city and SGB-level SWM systems, 2) listed sensors and actuators and analyzed their application in various types of SWM systems, 3) listed the direct and indirect stakeholders of the SWM systems, 4) identified the types of data shared between the SWM systems and stakeholders, and 5) identified the main promising directions and research gaps in the field of SWM systems. Based on an analysis of the existing approaches, technologies, and services, we developed recommendations for the implementation of city-level and SGB-level SWM systems.