Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Improved route planning and scheduling of waste collection and transport

2005; Elsevier BV; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.eswa.2005.07.009

1873-6793

Teemu Nuortio, Jari Kytöjoki, Harri Niska, Olli Bräysy,

Transportation and Mobility Innovations

The collection of waste is a highly visible and important municipal service that involves large expenditures. Waste collection problems are, however, one of the most difficult operational problems to solve. This paper describes the optimization of vehicle routes and schedules for collecting municipal solid waste in Eastern Finland. The solutions are generated by a recently developed guided variable neighborhood thresholding metaheuristic that is adapted to solve real-life waste collection problems. Several implementation approaches to speed up the method and cut down the memory usage are discussed. A case study on the waste collection in two regions of Eastern Finland demonstrates that significant cost reductions can be obtained compared with the current practice.