Optimization of municipal solid waste transportation by integrating GIS analysis, equation-based, and agent-based...

Area of Science:

• Environmental Engineering
• Operations Research
• Urban Planning

Background:

• Rising urban populations increase municipal solid waste (MSW) generation.
• Current MSW collection and transportation systems face challenges due to land scarcity and resource limitations.
• Inefficient routing and lack of fixed routes contribute to overloaded waste management systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and present an optimized model for municipal solid waste collection and transportation.
• To integrate static optimization with dynamic multi-agent based modeling and simulation.
• To demonstrate the model's efficiency in a real-world case study.

Main Methods:

• Development of an optimized plan in a static context.
• Integration of the static plan into a dynamic context using multi-agent based modeling and simulation.
• Application and case study in Hagiang City, Vietnam.

Main Results:

• The proposed model successfully optimizes MSW collection routes.
• A significant reduction in MSW collection costs was achieved.
• The model demonstrated efficiency in a practical urban setting.

Conclusions:

• The optimized model offers a viable solution for improving urban waste management.
• Multi-agent based simulation effectively integrates static optimization into dynamic systems.
• The proposed approach leads to substantial cost savings in MSW collection.