Smart Cities: A Case Study in Waste Monitoring and Management

Abstract

This paper explores the potential of employing sensor enabled solutions to improve on waste monitoring and collection in public trash bins. Through a user-centered design approach, an inexpensive monitoring system developed and tested in pilot study. The system consists of wireless nodes that use ultrasonic sensors to measure the empty space in the bins, a sensor gateway that is based on Long Rage Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) protocol and cloud-based back/front end for data collection, analysis and visualization. The system was evaluated through a pilot test, where six outdoor trash bins were remotely monitored at a university campus and a number of stakeholders were observed and interviewed. The results show that the existing technologies are mature enough to be able to develop and implement inexpensive add-on sensors to exiting trash bins, and employing such a system can provide the necessary insights to optimize waste collection processes, to avoid overfilled bins, and to improve the experience of the citizens.

Prescriptive analytics in public-sector decision-making: A framework and insights from charging infrastructure planning

“…For instance, Athey (2017) and Glaeser et al (2016) point out how cities can use analytical systems to more efficiently allocate building and health inspectors based on predicted probabilities of violations occurring, improving day-to-day operations and contributing to public safety and health as forms of public value. Similarly, predictive policing systems ( Gerber 2014 , Mohler et al 2015 , Shapiro 2017 ) seek to improve police operations by allocating resources to areas of anticipated crimes in advance and waste management systems ( Perera et al 2014 , Castro Lundin et al 2017 ) help cities to perform waste collection and disposal more efficiently. While such analytics systems leverage big data and the Internet of Things to improve operational performance, employing analytics is also a means to improve strategic decision-making in the public sector.…”

“…This notion relates to the concept of value-focused thinking ( Keeney 1996 ) and is particularly relevant in public decision-making ( Gregory and Keeney 1994 ). As outlined above, analytics can be leveraged to improve a wide range of public services, such as safety ( Gerber 2014 , Mohler et al 2015 ), health ( Glaeser et al 2016 ), and environmental management ( Castro Lundin et al 2017 ). Since the implementation of analytics solutions generally comes with some form of financial costs, the ability to measure this impact and calculate the cost effectiveness of the application is critical.…”

A review of IoT-based smart waste level monitoring system for smart cities

“…Based on previous studies, it is found that the most commonly used approach to address the problem is to prevent from the overloaded waste container. In order to achieve this, the container are designed to be equipped with waste level detection and this is done by implementing ultrasonic sensor [1,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. This shows that there is a consensus between researchers that the ultrasonic sensor is the most suitable sensor to achieve the level of waste in the container.…”

“…Based on the paper reviewed, much prior literature proposed a prototype that is using Arduino as the microcontroller to operate their system software. Some of them are using Raspberry pi-3 [36,46], other than that are using a different microcontroller such as PIC16F877A [38], mbed LPC1768 [41], Long Rage Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) [45] and ARM LPC2148 controller & IR wireless [47]. Results in Table 6 also suggests some of the paper reviewed need an external communication technology which allows to retrieved and transmitted data thought internet connection.…”

Design of Waste Management System for Smart Cities

“…explores the employing sensor allowed solutions to improve on waste monitoring and collection of trash bins. Through a usercentered design approach,a low-cost monitoring system developed and tested in study [12] Dr. N. Susila et al present set-up a traditional method of manually visiting the places of the bins and cleaning them overflow of waste in municipal leads to the creation of dirty atmosphere which turns into hazardous for lives. Therefor system is established to seen the level of waste collected is intimated via messages so as to remove the excess of the junk dust bins.…”