Study and development of ad hoc algorithms for designing waste collection routes: test of capabilities

This paper presents the analysis, development and testing of a Decision Support System (DSS) allowing planning, management and optimization of waste collection operations in an urban context. A proprietary simulator developed in Java™ and composed by four functionality modules (Global Positioning System, Data Mining system, Waste collection points placement optimizer, planner for routing and resource exploitation) was implemented by the Authors, and was then validated on a specific case study thanks to the cooperation with a big town (about 50’000 inhabitants) on Central Italy that was available for testing the simulation model.