Abstract
As the largest producing country of municipal solid waste (MSW) around the world, China is always challenged by a lower utilization rate of MSW due to a lack of a smart MSW forecasting strategy. This paper mainly aims to construct an effective MSW prediction model to handle this problem by using machine learning techniques. Based on the empirical analysis of provincial panel data from 2008 to 2019 in China, we find that the Deep Neural Network (DNN) model performs best among all machine learning models. Additionally, we introduce the SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP) method to unravel the correlation between MSW production and socioeconomic features (e.g., total regional GDP, population density). We also find the increase of urban population and agglomeration of wholesales and retails industries can positively promote the production of MSW in regions of high economic development, and vice versa. These results can be of help in the planning, design, and implementation of solid waste management system in China.
Highlights
IntroductionThe urban population in China has reached up to 900 million residents with an urbanization rate of over 60% (NBSC, 2021), which significantly challenges the existing urban sources (e.g., water, air, and energy) related to residents’ life quality (Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata, 2012)
Over the past decade, the urban population in China has reached up to 900 million residents with an urbanization rate of over 60% (NBSC, 2021), which significantly challenges the existing urban sources related to residents’ life quality (Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata, 2012)
This paper focused on comparing with six machine learning (ML) models, including the multiple linear regression (MLR), support vector regression (SVR), Random Forest, extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), k-nearest neighbor, and deep neural network (DNN)
Summary
The urban population in China has reached up to 900 million residents with an urbanization rate of over 60% (NBSC, 2021), which significantly challenges the existing urban sources (e.g., water, air, and energy) related to residents’ life quality (Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata, 2012). The municipal solid waste (MSW), as renewable energy, is considered an essential part of the Waste-to-Energy (WtE) system (Ouda et al, 2013; Kuznetsova et al, 2019; Mukherjee et al, 2020). It is reported that the production of MSW in China was around 242 million tons in 2020 compared with that of 8.17 million tons in 2008 (NBSC, 2020). The efficient management of municipal solid waste is becoming an important concern for urban sustainability governance. The utilization efficiency of MSW was merely about 45% in China, which was much lower than that in other advanced countries, such as over 80% in Japan (Ding et al, 2021). How to increase the utilization efficiency of MSW would impact both central and local governments in China to promote urban sustainable development (He and Lin, 2019)
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