A Cloud-based Dynamic Waste Management System for Smart Cities

Abstract

A smart city is a vision to adopt multiple information and communication technology (ICT) solutions in the management of public affairs. Waste management problem is acute in the cities and urban areas now a days. Number of trucks roaming around, collecting waste at any time, excessive manpower requirement and inefficient monitoring are some of the difficulties we face with the conventional waste collection approach. The purpose of our work is to introduce a smart and intelligent waste management system that is able to handle the process dynamically and cost effectively. In our approach weight and volume of waste thrown in the waste bins are collected by economical sensors and then sent to cloud server using a micro-controller and GPRS. This data is used to find the waste collection schedule to maximize the collection. Location of vehicles and waste bins are used to find the shortest possible collection route for each truck which is implemented by Ant Colony Optimization(ACO) technique. The system is adaptable to dynamic changes i.e. routes blocked during waste collection process. The whole process can be monitored centrally and thus provide a high quality service to the citizens of a smart city.