Prediction of Municipal Solid Waste Generation for Developing Countries in Temporal Scale: A Fuzzy Inference System Approach

Abstract

Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) based prediction models for the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generation has been developed in the present work to study the influences of total population, percapita annual income, literacy rate, age group and monthly consumer expenditure on temporal variability of MSW generation for Kolhapur city, India. Ten models were developed considering two input variables at a time to study the effect of the socioeconomic and demographic parameters on MSW generation. Finally, all five input variables were considered in a single model to predict MSW generation in a temporal scale. Result shows that, the model with input variables consumer expenditure and age group was best fitted with highest coefficient of determination (0.985) value and lowest standard error of the estimate (1.562) value for the modelling period. For the design period, models related to consumer expenditure show higher waste generation. Models related to population and age show prediction similar to ‘Kolhapur Municipal Corporations’ prediction. However model with input literacy and income shows very low waste generation prediction. The proposed modelling technique is very useful in MSW generation prediction for a temporal scale in uncertain and random environment globally.