Optimization of Household Waste Collection Routes Using GIS: Case Study El Bousten district, commune of Sfax, Tunisia

Abstract

This paper presents a method for optimizing the household waste collection system supported by Geographical Information System (GIS) tool for the sector 1of district El Bousten of Sfax commune, Tunisia. The ArcGIS Network Analyst based model is applied for the purpose of improving the collection process effectiveness, namely, the household collection bins’ reallocation along with the vehicles’ tour optimization procedure in terms of distance and time. Results indicated a reduction of 25, 83% in route and 21, 5 % in the time spent of collection along with fuel consumption savings. These findings show that GIS based model tends to exhibit significant improvements as to the collection and transportation system, therefore, to its economical and environmental costs.