The investigation of a class of capacitated arc routing problems : the collection of garbage in developing countries

• Main Author: Amponsah, Samuel Kwame
• Published: University of Birmingham 2003
• Subjects: 363.72856091724
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.413133

This thesis is concerned with the collection of garbage in developing countries where the weather is hot. This problem is modelled as a Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (CARP) with multiple trips while taking into consideration the cost and the effect of the smell of the garbage on the environment. Smell is used as a shorthand for health hazard. The first part of the study introduces managing solid waste in developing countries with much reference to Ghana, and provides a review of the literature with respect to Capacitated Arc Routing and its related problems. The second part provides a constructive heuristic, which takes into account the environmental aspect as well as the cost to solve the routing aspect of garbage collection. This is based on a look-ahead strategy, which is enhanced by two additional procedures. This idea is extended to solve the multi-vehicle CARP. Two constructive heuristics, namely bin-packing and multi-vehicle-based approaches are designed to solve the problem with the intention of minimising overtime. The third part of the thesis develops a Variable Neighbourhood Search metaheuristic as a post optimiser to improve further the solutions obtained by the use of the look-ahead strategy. Computational testing is carried out on the test problems used in the literature. Encouraging results for the CARP were generated under two scenarios, namely with and without the presence of the environment. The fourth part of the thesis deals with a real life garbage collection problem, which exists in one portion of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly in Ghana. Interesting results are found when compared to the presently used implementation. The input is gathered using GPS, by hand and via simple mathematical expressions based on the feedback of the users. Some suggestions for future research are emphasised.