A Simple Approach for Designing a Waste Collection System for Guwahati City Using Google Earth

Due to lack of monitoring and data availability, designing an efficient municipal solid waste (MSW) storage and collection system is a big challenge for many urban areas in developing nations. However, with the help of available remote sensing and geographic information system (RS and GIS) tools, the efficiency of the MSW collection system can be increased substantially. Google Earth and Google Maps are online freely available and easily accessible tools which can be utilized for improving the efficiency of waste management system. In the present study, a simple approach for developing a waste collection system is illustrated which requires a very less amount of data and easily accessible RS and GIS tools. By using basic population, waste composition, and per capita waste generation data, bin sizes were calculated for secondary waste collection with proper waste segregation. Then by using Google Earth Pro software and effective population density data, service areas for the bins and bin location plan were prepared. For sketching waste collection routes, Google Earth pro software was used by following the manual vehicle routing approach. For selecting an appropriate time for the secondary waste collection, historical traffic data of the road network was used which is freely available in Google Maps. The approach used in the present study can be effectively replicated for small to large cities to develop an integrated solid waste management system. For better collection efficiency, the present approach can be combined with linear programming or multicriteria decision modelling for collection route optimization.