A multi-objective location-routing model for dental waste considering environmental factors

Abstract

Nowadays, the amounts of infectious medical waste (IMW) have surged considerably so waste management has become a critical emergency in many developing countries. However, most large medical waste generation centers (MWGC) are equipped with treatment facilities, small MWGC faces the waste management problem. It reveals the significance of having a proper program for small health centers. This is an indisputable difficulty that governments bordered because it imposes great costs on societies, also the environmental problems caused by improper treatment are irreparable. To attend to all the essential aspects of the problem, this paper recommended a location-routing model with four objective functions to minimize the total costs, environmental pollution, the risk imposed on the population around disposal sites, and the total violation from the expected arrival time. Considering a multi-period problem with a maximum acceptable delay plays a key role to connect the assumptions to the real-world problem. In addition, for solving mathematical models based on case studies, the role of uncertainty is undeniable. The demand for dental waste treatment is not definite and is changed based on the different conditions thus fuzzy chance-constrained programming is proposed for this problem to tackle the uncertainty. The revised multi-choice goal programming method is considered to solve the model and a real case study for dental clinics in Babol city of Iran is investigated to illustrate the validation of the proposed model. The results indicate that the solution method can create a balance between four objective functions. Finally, sensitivity analyses are performed for some parameters to analyze the behavior of the objective functions.

Designing a sustainable-resilient-responsive supply chain network considering uncertainty in the COVID-19 era

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in considerable challenges for Mazandaran, a northern province of Iran. Due to some special geographical features of Mazandaran province, the infection and mortality rate of corona in this region increased rapidly ( Kordi et al, 2023 , Kordi et al, 2022 ). Therefore, to attend to the problems in this region and forecast future pandemics, the cities covered by Babol University of Medical Sciences in Mazandaran province were considered as a case study.…”

El problema de localización y ruteo con múltiples objetivos: una revisión de literatura

“…Como una problemática que se ha incrementado debido a la pandemia del Covid-19, (49) proponen un modelo de localización y ruteo para la gestión de residuos médicos, que se categorizan como residuos peligrosos. Diversos autores han publicado estudios similares para minimizar los costos y el riesgo asociado a la recolección de esa clase de residuos, cuya generación aumenta en épocas de crisis sanitaria (50)(51)(52)(53)(54).…”

The IoT-enabled sustainable reverse supply chain for COVID-19 Pandemic Wastes (CPW)

“…One of the most critical problems in organizations is a structure that enables them to achieve real-time SCs information. Also, this structure ensures organizations that the transmission of information throughout the SC systems is safe and secure ( Kordi et al, 2022 , Kargar et al, 2020a ). Information technology (IT) excels in this situation and plays an outstanding role because it generates, stores, processes, and distributes information ( Garrido-Hidalgo et al, 2020 ).…”