Presenting and solving a sustainable multi-objective model of the hospital waste management supply chain during pandemic under fuzzy condition

Abstract

In this article, a four-objective mathematical model for the reverse supply chain of hospital waste management during the Corona epidemic in Iran is presented. The objectives of the presented model are: 1) Minimization of costs, including the cost of setting facilities up, waste processing, vehicle fuel costs, and environmental costs resulting from the emission of polluting gases; 2) maximizing the energy produced by burning waste; 3) Minimizing the risk of contracting the virus of non-management or mismanagement of waste and 4) Maximizing the amount of employment of labor in the established facilities. Due to the being multi-objective nature of the model, two multi-objective horse herd optimization algorithm (HOA) based on Pareto Archive and NSGA-II algorithm have been used to solve the problem. The results of solving the model showed that the proposed HOA algorithm is able to solve the model and achieve solutions with higher quality and diversity with an accuracy of 26% compared to the NSGA-II algorithm. Additionally, the comparison results of spacing metric and execution time of two algorithms show that NSGA-II algorithm searches the solution space with higher uniformity and solves the model in less time.