Sectoring of a waste collection area

Abstract

Waste Management is an iterative process and optimization will thus lead to substantial cost savings. Although municipalities spend a signi cant amount of their budget on the waste collection and transportation process, it is not prioritized and ine ective strategies are followed when looking at the disposal of municipal solid waste. The objective of this paper is to improve the current waste collection strategy by partioning a waste collection service area into collection days and further into collection vehicles. The problem is identi ed as an Arc Routing Problem (ARP) and due to its complexity, heuristic procedures are incorporated in nding a solution. Three methods were evaluated and identi ed as suitable. The rst method is called the Two-Phase Heuristic (TPH); in phase 1, sectors are built and in phase 2 the routing within each sector is established. The second method, called the Best Insertion Heuristic (BIH), computes the sectoring and routing simultaneously and sectors are built by adding tasks in a best insertion manner. With the third method, called the Exact Cost Heuristic (ECH), the sectoring and routing are also done simultaneously, but the sectors are built by adding a task and computing the exact cost of the sector by making use of a routing algorithm. These three methods are tested on benchmark problems and the results evaluated.