Optimization of Solid Waste Collection and Transportation System by Use of the TransCAD: A Case Study

Background & Aims of the Study:  Collection and transportation of municipal solid waste (MSW) for various reasons, especially economic and social are considered as one of the most important elements of the solid waste management system. More than sixty percent of the costs in solid waste management systems in different countries are due to the collection and transportation process including laboring cost, the high price of fuel and machinery and equipments maintenance. This paper aims optimization of solid waste collection routes of Marvdasht, located in Fars province of Iran. Materials & Methods:  This approach consists of several steps. First step includes filed visits, surveys, and interviews with relevant authorities and individuals in the form of questionnaires through which available information about the current route of solid waste are collected. TransCAD, a professional and specialized software for solid waste routing, is then employed for solid waste collection optimization taking into account factors such as shortest path length and time, minimum U-turn and capacity of machinery, etc… Results: The proposed routes were compared to the existing routes for collection of waste considering costs and collection time. According to the results obtained from TransCAD software for the considered case, compared to the current service the total distance and travel time can be decreased up to 16% and 30%, respectively. Conclusions: TransCAD software can perform appropriate routing for solid waste collection, which has the optimized total distance travelled and travel time as did for Marvdasht city.