title: A facility location model for municipal solid waste management system under uncertain environment.
abstract: In municipal solid waste management system, decision makers have to develop an insight into the processes namely, waste generation, collection, transportation, processing, and disposal methods. Many parameters (e.g., waste generation rate, functioning costs of facilities, transportation cost, and revenues) in this system are associated with uncertainties. Often, these uncertainties of parameters need to be modeled under a situation of data scarcity for generating probability distribution function or membership function for stochastic mathematical programming or fuzzy mathematical programming respectively, with only information of extreme variations. Moreover, if uncertainties are ignored, then the problems like insufficient capacities of waste management facilities or improper utilization of available funds may be raised. To tackle uncertainties of these parameters in a more efficient manner an algorithm, based on interval analysis, has been developed. This algorithm is applied to find optimal solutions for a facility location model, which is formulated to select economically best locations of transfer stations in a hypothetical urban center. Transfer stations are an integral part of contemporary municipal solid waste management systems, and economic siting of transfer stations ensures financial sustainability of this system. The model is written in a mathematical programming language AMPL with KNITRO as a solver. The developed model selects five economically best locations out of ten potential locations with an optimum overall cost of [394,836, 757,440] Rs.1/day ([5906, 11,331] USD/day) approximately. Further, the requirement of uncertainty modeling is explained based on the results of sensitivity analysis.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India.
authors.forename: Vinay
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Yadav
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, National Institute of Science and Technology, Berhampur 761008, India.
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Bhurjee
authors.affiliation: Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India; Inter Disciplinary Program on Climate Change, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India; Centre for Urban Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India. Electronic address: skarmakar@iitb.ac.in.
authors.forename: Subhankar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Karmakar
authors.affiliation: Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India; Centre for Urban Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India; Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change, School of Environment, Resources and Development (SERD) Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Klongluang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand.
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Dikshit
mesh_terms: D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012037:Refuse Disposal; D062611:Solid Waste; D014186:Transportation; D035501:Uncertainty; D064091:Waste Disposal Facilities; D018505:Waste Management
chemical_list: D062611:Solid Waste
keywords: Facility location problem; Interval analysis; Municipal solid waste management; Optimization; Uncertainty