Abstract:
Municipal waste collectors have limited physical capabilities because of task related
fatigue factors. However, minimal attention has been paid to fatigue and its recovery in the
Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (CARP), despite their signi cant impacts on collection
performance. To understand the dynamic impacts of workers' physical constraints on
collection performance, we propose three models. The rst model is an acute-physicalcardiac
fatigue model that quanti es the work pulse rate of the workers as a function
of work rate. The second is a transportation-capacity (TC) model which determines the
total amount of bins that can be serviced in a single shift by a collection crew for both
the without-fatigue and with-fatigue states. Lastly, a service time model was developed,
which takes the fatigue model, TC model and an arbitrary collection route as input. The
service time model determines as output, the total collection time and how the labour
fatigue changes throughout the route. The proposed models have the potential to decide
alternatives for waste collection. That is, to do better route planning and to develop
better routes. This will secure high productivity without compromising workers' health
and safety. Ultimately, the proposed models highlight and address the research gap of the
CARP with respect to human factors, speci fically, labour fatigue.
