Rapid population growth and high rate of urbanization make municipal solid waste management a
challenging task for municipalities due to the inadequacy of infrastructural services. Taking this into
consideration, this paper proposes an approach for finding economically optimal locations and feasibility
demonstration of a municipal solid waste management infrastructure unit, i.e. waste transfer stations.
This analytical approach consists of two basic elements: (i) a mathematical model to optimize overall
cost for municipal solid waste management; and (ii) geographical information system tools to create a
data inventory for the mathematical model. The novelty of the proposed model includes heterogeneity in
data compilation, on-road measurements of distances and strategic allocation of transfer stations. Also,
to assess waste load estimation more precisely, analyzing the impacts of heterogeneity in data and onroad
distances on model, three distinct cases have been considered. Further, the developed approach has
been demonstrated on the city of Nashik, India. The mathematical model for Nashik city is written in a
mathematical programming language AMPL and the solutions have been obtained using KNITRO solver.
Optimization model selects three best locations out of eight potential locations with the optimum capacity
of 200 TPD. Furthermore, the assessment of model's behavior under uncertainty has been performed
with a comprehensive sensitivity analysis for further improvements. The integrity of all
components in this study produces a generic framework for helping municipal officials and researchers
for development of a municipal solid waste management system with transfer stations in an economically
optimal manner.
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1. Introduction
In last few decades, the rate of urbanization in the world has
increased significantly.