Miguel Rodrigues, João Alexandre Antunes, Vera Miguéis
{"title":"Aligning priorities: A Comparative analysis of scientific and policy perspectives on municipal solid waste management.","authors":"Miguel Rodrigues, João Alexandre Antunes, Vera Miguéis","doi":"10.1016/j.wasman.2024.11.031","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Municipal solid waste (MSW) management has become a critical issue today, posing substantial economic, environmental, and social challenges. Identifying and analyzing dominant themes in this field is essential for advancing research and policies towards sustainable MSW management practices. This study aims to explore the key issues related to MSW management that have been addressed by both the scientific community and policymakers through funded projects. By doing so, the study seeks to guide the scientific community as a knowledge producer and the EU as a key funder. Two Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) models were applied to analyze the themes from two corpora: one representing scientific literature and another focusing on EU-funded projects. Additionally, this analysis was complemented by a quantitative estimation of the similarity between the two corpora, providing a measure of alignment between the scientific community and policymakers. The results generally indicate that the two spheres are aligned and highlight the diversity of topics explored by the scientific community. Nevertheless, it is concluded that there are opportunities for further research on specific topics, such as leaching and the extraction of heavy metals. Additionally, the popularity of topics identified in European Union-funded projects has fluctuated considerably over time, focusing primarily on waste management rather than its prevention. In light of these findings, waste prevention emerges as a promising avenue for future EU-funded research initiatives.</p>","PeriodicalId":23969,"journal":{"name":"Waste management","volume":"193 ","pages":"70-83"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Waste management","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2024.11.031","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, ENVIRONMENTAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Municipal solid waste (MSW) management has become a critical issue today, posing substantial economic, environmental, and social challenges. Identifying and analyzing dominant themes in this field is essential for advancing research and policies towards sustainable MSW management practices. This study aims to explore the key issues related to MSW management that have been addressed by both the scientific community and policymakers through funded projects. By doing so, the study seeks to guide the scientific community as a knowledge producer and the EU as a key funder. Two Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) models were applied to analyze the themes from two corpora: one representing scientific literature and another focusing on EU-funded projects. Additionally, this analysis was complemented by a quantitative estimation of the similarity between the two corpora, providing a measure of alignment between the scientific community and policymakers. The results generally indicate that the two spheres are aligned and highlight the diversity of topics explored by the scientific community. Nevertheless, it is concluded that there are opportunities for further research on specific topics, such as leaching and the extraction of heavy metals. Additionally, the popularity of topics identified in European Union-funded projects has fluctuated considerably over time, focusing primarily on waste management rather than its prevention. In light of these findings, waste prevention emerges as a promising avenue for future EU-funded research initiatives.
期刊介绍:
Waste Management is devoted to the presentation and discussion of information on solid wastes,it covers the entire lifecycle of solid. wastes.
Scope:
Addresses solid wastes in both industrialized and economically developing countries
Covers various types of solid wastes, including:
Municipal (e.g., residential, institutional, commercial, light industrial)
Agricultural
Special (e.g., C and D, healthcare, household hazardous wastes, sewage sludge)