Optimizing municipal solid waste transportation routes for pune city using MATLAB

Abstract

The environment is heading towards a potential risk due to unsustainable waste disposal. It is a sensitive issue which concerns about serious environmental problems in today’s world. The present situation of direct dumping of the waste without proper inspection and separation leaves a serious impact of environmental pollution causing a tremendous growth in health related problems. “Domestic, industrial and other wastes, whether they are of low or medium level wastes, they are causing environmental pollution and have become perennial problems for mankind. If this situation is not handled in a proper manner within time then it would lead to worse consequences on a global level. There has been development of new technologies for improving the waste management systems. In this paper we attempt to show a detailed analysis of three crucial parameters: distance, time and cost affecting the solid waste management system by a direct comparison of existing routes and through the routes obtained by application of Arc GIS. Method adopted for analysis is VAM (Vogel’s Approximation Method) a part of Transportation model, and results of the same are validated using MATLAB Software programmed exclusively for VAM.