A Heuristic-Based Methodology for Collecting Irregular Waste in Sustainable Cities

This study develops a mobile-supported system that local governments can use in their irregular waste collection services within the scope of smart cities. Irregular waste refers to waste that individuals or organizations produce non-periodically, which arises unexpectedly or in an unusual manner. This waste can accumulate within the city and cause environmental pollution if it is not notified to the municipality or local government for collection. Unlike small-volume household waste collected at routine times, irregular waste is generally large-volume waste such as construction rubble, vegetable oil, mineral oil, and garden waste. Municipalities have different collection vehicles with varying capacities to suit different waste types and quantities. To increase efficiency in the waste collection process, waste locations should be sequenced and vehicles appropriate to the waste type should be allocated in planning. In the irregular waste collection system developed in this study, waste locations are marked on the map applications running on mobile devices, and notifications are sent to the municipality. This provides a faster, more traceable, and effortless service compared to traditional telephone or petition-based notification methods. The Google Maps API was used for processing and visualizing the notification locations on the map. Notification data is recorded in a database by municipality, and daily or 4-hour planning is done using this data. In this study, genetic algorithm and differential evolution algorithm were used for vehicle routing and vehicle type optimization. To compare the efficiency of both methods, 4 different scenarios were designed with different numbers of waste locations and different types and quantities of waste, and the successes of the methods were compared. Route optimization is calculated not statically, however, using real-time traffic data with Google Distance Matrix API integration, generating the shortest and most economical travel route between waste locations. In this way, efficiency is increased for densely populated city centers while providing citizens with an innovative irregular waste collection infrastructure using more up-to-date technologies.