Design of GIS-Based Optimization Approach for Transportation Route Selection in Municipal Solid Waste Management

Municipalities in India’s megacities are grappling with a slew of issues as they try to keep up with the vast amounts of solid trash created in all parts of the country. In this work, route optimization approaches were employed to collect municipal solid waste (MSW) in Patna, India. The geographic location of garbage collection stations, existing road network, municipal boundaries, and location of dumping yards were used as an input element in the modelling exercise. K-means clustering algorithm was used to identify the possible locations of secondary collection points and transfer stations within the study area. Shortest path analysis feature of QGIS software is used to study route optimization. All of the locations were separately modelled in order to determine the best collection routes for MSW management. For the specified network, this analysis discovered a reduction in haul distance of 20.18 ± 29.70%.