Operational management of solid waste selective collection - An approach using decision support system

Abstract

A decision support system (DSS) for modeling and solving the recyclable waste collection operational planning is presented. The computer system has the following objectives: a) to define the vehicles' allocation and routing; b) to determine the quantity of solid waste to be sent to each waste recyclable trial unit; and c) to generate operational scenarios to be taken into account in the decision process. To accomplish such objectives the DSS employs two well-known operation research techniques, namely simulation and assignment/VRP algorithms. We also present a computational study with real-life data from the solid waste collection in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in which we show that the results provided by the computational system outperforms the operation planning currently adopted.