Abstract:
Municipal solid waste collection is a costly service provided by governments all over the world. As
a result of the costs and operational complexity associated with this service it has become the focus
of many studies on optimisation. Key to successfully optimising the collection of waste is having
access to data relating to waste generation rates and service levels. These di er signi cantly from
city to city and therefore developing waste generation models for large metropolitan cities is crucial.
Not only do e ective waste generation and service analysis models aid in developing optimisation
models but they also lead to better strategic and operational decision making on the part of city
planners. This paper used GPS traces collected from the City of Cape Town's waste collection
eet to estimate the amount of waste produced per suburb, the mean service time per service
area, the mean travel times between land lls and service areas and nally the velocity distributions
inside and outside service areas. Results show that a waste generation and service analysis model
is an easy, accurate and cost e ective method for developing vital operational and strategic waste
management data.
