Optimization and assessment of waste bin locations using Geographic Information System.

Abstract

This study presents a Geographic Information System (GIS) method for finding the optimum location of municipal waste bins in a typical developing city based on existing spatial organization and infrastructure. The optimum locations of one to ten waste bins within potential service areas were determined by the built-in solver for p-median problems in TransCAD v. 5.0 (Caliper, Corp.) software. The social impact of the waste bins in terms of the amount of solid waste collected and waste generation points served within 200m walking distance, improved as the number of waste bins was increased from 1 to 5. As the number of sited waste bins were greater than 5, 100% service coverage and public satisfaction was achieved while some waste bins became underutilized. The results of the study also showed that the GIS optimized waste bin locations tend to be more accessible to waste generators than empirical waste bin locations.