Heterogeneous Sensing Data Analysis for Commercial Waste Collection

Abstract

Waste collection has become a major issue all over the world, especially when it is offered as a service for businesses; unlike public waste collection where the parameters are relatively homogeneous. This industry can greatly benefit from new sensing technologies and advances in artificial intelligence that have been achieved over the last few years. However, in most situations waste management systems are based on obsolete technologies, with a low level of interoperability and thus offering static processes. The most advanced solutions are generally limited to statistical, non-predictive approaches and have a limited view of reality, making them weakly effective in dealing with day-to-day business issues (overflowing containers, poor quality of service, etc.). This paper presents a case study currently being developed in Luxembourg with a company offering a business waste collection service, which has a significant amount of constraints to consider. Our main objective is to investigate the use of multiple waste data sources to derive useful indicators for improving collection processes. We start with company-owned historical data and then investigate GPS information from tracking devices positioned on collection trucks. Furthermore, we analyze data collected from ultrasonic sensors deployed on almost 50 different containers to measure fill levels. We describe the deployment steps and show that this approach, combined with anomaly detection and prediction techniques, has the potential to change the way this business operates. We also discuss the interest of the different datasets presented and multi-objective optimization issues. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first major work dedicated to the world of professional waste collection.

LoRaWAN and Urban Waste Management – A Trial

“…However, regarding the practical application of LoRa based commercial sensors to commercial waste containers, in place and being used daily, the related research is scarce, being [14,51,52] some of the most relevant works that address the research on the sensor type up to the application and business case. In [14] the city of Salamanca was used as a use case, the authors used sensors developed by themselves together with commercial waste containers (although only surface ones), and in [51] the authors also developed the sensors and mostly addressed the business case, also using TheThingsNetwork as the underlying network for their trials, the same the one used on the trials presented below, however, using our own commercial gateways.…”

“…In [14] the city of Salamanca was used as a use case, the authors used sensors developed by themselves together with commercial waste containers (although only surface ones), and in [51] the authors also developed the sensors and mostly addressed the business case, also using TheThingsNetwork as the underlying network for their trials, the same the one used on the trials presented below, however, using our own commercial gateways. In [52] the authors depict a case study in Luxembourg for improving the waste collection process. The presented case study uses Sigfox as an underlying LPWAN for the filling level sensors placed at the waste containers.…”

LoRaWAN and Urban Waste Management—A Trial

“…However, regarding the practical application of LoRa based commercial sensors to commercial waste containers, in place and being used daily, the related research is scarce, being [ 14 , 51 , 52 ] some of the most relevant works addressing the research on the sensor type up to the application and business case, all of them with trials in European cities. In [ 14 ], the city of Salamanca, Spain was used as a use case, the authors used sensors developed by themselves together with commercial waste containers (although only surface ones).…”

Reforming MSWM in Sukunan (Yogjakarta, Indonesia): A case-study of applying a zero-waste approach based on circular economy paradigm

“…For most cities in Indonesia, waste management is undertaken as a public service with high expenses that include labour, equipment, and infrastructure cost. Their expenditures range between 80% and 90% of the MSWM budget for collection costs alone ( Melakessou et al., 2020 ). Therefore, most of the cities in developing countries could not manage (collection and disposal of MSW) properly with the limited resources they have ( Mak et al., 2019 ).…”