Heuristics for Waste Collection Arc Routing Problem

Abstract

Waste management is still an expanding eld which needs to be constantly enhanced so that waste transportation and treatment is as eective as possible. An important part of this process is a waste collection at the municipal level. Decision-making about daily routing for all vehicles from a heterogenous eet substantially in uences the expenses of technical services. The need of route scheduling comes also from the newly separated fractions. Transportation features include the capacity of vehicles, number and type of containers on the route, traffic light delays and many others. The mathematical model that properly describes the real practice of servicing containers has not been published yet. Moreover, routing problems are generally not solvable by exact methods, so the appropriate heuristic algorithm has been developed. A case study with obtained results is discussed. This solution serves not only to improve the current operational situation, but also to create new route schedules for increasing number of collected commodities.

Keywords

• waste management
• combinatorial optimization
• heuristics
• routing problem
• waste collection
• arc routing