Reliable prediction of municipal solid waste (MSW) generation rates is a significant element of planning and implementation of sustainable solid waste management strategies. In this study, the multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network (MLP-ANN) is applied to verify the prediction of annual generation rates of domestic, commercial and construction and demolition (C&D) wastes from the year 1997 to 2016 in Askar Landfill site in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The proposed robust predictive models incorporated selected explanatory variables to reflect the influence of social, demographical, economic, geographical and touristic factors upon waste generation rates (WGRs). The Mean Squared Error (MSE) and coefficient of determination ( R2) are used as performance indicators to evaluate effectiveness of the developed models. MLP-ANN models exhibited strong accuracy in predictions with high R2 and low MSE values. The R2 values for domestic, commercial and C&D wastes are 0.95, 0.99 and 0.91, respectively. Our results show that the developed MLP-ANN models are effective for the prediction of WGRs from different sources and could be considered as a cost-effective approach for planning integrated MSW management systems.

The evolution of machine learning (ML) algorithms provides researchers and engineers with state-of-the-art tools to dynamically model complex relationships. The design and operation of municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems require accurate estimation of generation rates. In this study, we applied rapid, non-linear and non-parametric data driven ML algorithms independently, multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network (MLP-ANN) and support vector regression (SVR) models to predict annual MSW generation rates in Bahrain. Models were trained and tested with MSW generation data for period of 1997–2019. The population, gross domestic product, annual tourist numbers, annual electricity consumption and total annual CO2 emissions were selected as explanatory variables and incorporated into developed models. The zero score normalization (ZSN) and minimum maximum normalization (MMN) methods were utilized to improve the quality of data and subsequently enhances the performance of ML algorithms. Statistical metrics were employed to discriminate performance of MLP-ANN and SVR models. The linear, polynomial, radial basis function (RBF) and sigmoid kernel functions were investigated to find the optimal SVR model. Results showed that RBF-SVR model with R2 value of 0.97% and 4.82% and absolute forecasting error (AFE) for the period of 2008 and 2019 exhibits superior prediction and robustness in comparison to MLP-ANN. The efficacy of MLP-ANN model was also reasonably successful with R2 value of 0.94. It was shown that MMN pre-processing generated optimal MLP-ANN model while ZSN pre-processing produced optimal RBF-SVR model. This work also highlights the importance of application of ML modelling approaches to plan and implement their roadmap for waste management systems by policymakers.

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