The regional urban solid waste management system: A modelling approach

The Urban Solid Waste Management System (USWMS) is intrinsically complex, because it involves different connected problems and must achieve objectives which are often in conflict. It is difficult to evaluate the various alterantives in planning and managing it. It is thus useful to use mathematical models to provide a tool describing and evaluating the USWMS. This work concerns the development of a location-allocation model for planning USWMS and some heuristic techniques for solving it. The results of the model are the number and the location of waste disposal plants, specifying the technology adopted, the amount of waste processed and the service basin of each plant. Particular care is given to the case of the Italian region Lombardy: the regional USWMS law is in fact a useful stimulus for a constructive comparison between the actual system and possible alternatives.