Smart routing for municipal solid waste collection: a heuristic approach

Municipal solid waste (MSW) is considered as one of the primary factors that contribute greatly to the rising of climate change and global warming affecting sustainable development in many different ways. It is indeed necessary to investigate an efficient computerized method for the optimization of MSW collection that minimizes the environmental and other factors according to a given waste collection scenario. In this paper, we propose a heuristic-based smart routing algorithm for MSW collection and implement it by Python scripts in ArcGIS to calculate optimal solutions of the model including routes and total travelling distances and operational time of vehicles. The algorithm will be validated on a case study of Sfax city which is the second largest and among the most polluted cities in Tunisia. A novel optimization model for the MSW collection in Sfax is designed and given to the algorithm for calculation. The achieved results are then compared with those of the current real scenario as well as evaluated by a multi-criteria decision aid method namely PROMETHEE in terms of environment and economic criteria.