Life cycle assessment and life cycle costs for pre-disaster waste management systems

Abstract

This study develops a method of environmental and economic evaluation of an integrated disaster waste management system that considers the spatial scale of removal, transport, and treatment of disaster waste. A case study was conducted on combustibles, which is a type of disaster waste derived from dwellings, in Mie Prefecture, Japan. First, we calculated the quantity and the spatial distribution of disaster waste derived from dwellings and tsunami debris produced as a result of a large-scale earthquake. The quantity of disaster waste was estimated as 7,178,000t with functioning flood-preventing facilities and 11,956,000t without functioning flood prevention facilities. Ensuring resilience in the face of earthquakes and tsunamis by renovating flood-preventing facilities is extremely important in decreasing the production of wastes, especially in coastal regions. Next, the transportation network for transporting combustibles in disaster waste to temporary storage sites, incineration plants, and landfill was constructed using an optimization model. The results showed that if flood-preventing facilities do not function properly, the installation of temporary incineration facilities becomes essential. Life-cycle emissions of CO, SO, NO, and PM and the costs of removal, storage, and treatment of combustibles were calculated as 258,000t, 618t, 1705t, 7.9t, and 246millionUSD, respectively, in the case of functioning flood-preventing facilities. If flood-preventing facilities do not function, the quantity of environmentally unfriendly emissions and the costs increase. This result suggested the significance of renovation in order to maintain the conditions of flood-preventing facilities to decrease the environmental burden and costs as well as keep the production of disaster waste at a minimum.

A systematic review of recent developments in disaster waste management

“…Disaster waste closely depend upon the type of disaster (Brown et al, 2011a). After careful scanning, the authors of this review found that a few authors discussed waste management in various disaster contexts (Tabata et al, 2017;Wakabayashi et al, 2017;Asari et al, 2013;Koyama et al, 2016;Pramudita and Taniguchi, 2014). Therefore, the total number of papers reviewed by disaster type was 89.…”

Disaster waste management after flood events

“…The literature research highlighted the possibility to develop studies for the prediction of both the environmental and the economic impact of a disaster waste management, also considering possible innovative approaches for the scraps exploitation, mainly in Japanese areas (Portugal‐Pereira & Lee, ; Tabata, Wakabayashi, Tsai, & Saeki, ; Wakabayashi, Peii, Tabata, & Saeki, ). The papers focused on specific critical impact categories and they included defined areas, with their related peculiarities.…”

Disaster waste management after the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake: A mini-review of earthquake waste management and the Kumamoto experience

“…A similar cash for work model was adopted in the demolition and removal of debris from damaged buildings in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010 (United Nations Development Programme, 2013). Case studies on pre-disaster management by local governments are essential for different types of disasters, and their scales and maximum damage levels can provide information about the debris that could be generated, thereby enabling debris removal plans, open spaces required for temporary storage, transportation networks, and management options to be planned in advance (Tabata et al, 2017;Wakabayashi et al, 2017). The debris management system framework suggested by Kim et al (2018) and Srour et al (2013) can enable decision-makers to determine the necessary budget and time for debris removal in a timely manner by incorporating past debris removal data into the proposed framework and comparing the difference between the actual costs and those estimated by the system to enhance the robustness of its evaluation of an existing system under different disaster scenarios.…”