Developing decision support model for municipal solid waste management plan for Indian cities

Abstract

In the race for globalization, India is urbanising at an accelerated pace. This has led to poorer quality of life in. urban centres due to high pressure on the scanty urban resources. Poor management of Municipal Solid Waste is a great concern today and is going to be a greater concern tomorrow. Waste management and its safe disposal cannot de postponed for tomorrow and it has to be handled simultaneously with the developmental process. Many cities in the world have tried to address their waste management through a process of trial and error. Similarly, Indian cities have also tried many waste management models and technologies with some amount of successes and failures. It is a Mantra in Solid Waste Management that every city is unique in its solid waste problems and local solutions need to be developed for local problems. Global solutions and western technologies are not going to solve the local Indian waste problems. Management of Municipal Solid Waste cannot be addressed without taking the stakeholders into considerations. The success of a model depends on the extent of participation and ownership expressed by the stakeholders. The problem is more complex due to involvement of too many stakeholders and too many technological solutions and environmental regulations (present and future).This study is an attempt to develop a decision support model for Indian MSW Problems. It will encompass all possible variables and simplify the model by making few assumptions. The model should be able to guide the policy makers in MSW Management to take appropriate decisions suitable to their respective towns. And cities. The task is enormous and uncertain. The attempt is to develop a simplified, and applicable model. The study undertook citizens' survey, carried out MSW management exploratory case studies of few ULBs, and did some empirical cost calculations to formulate the decision support model. An effective decision making framework was developed by incorporating analytical and mathematical tools. The identification of a suitable model for SWM followed a sequence ()f three steps - finding out the best 'collection and transportation (CaT)Plan, finding out the best disposal plan and clubbing them together. The· binary coding method generated 17 models of CaT and disposal plans. Isolating the disposal plans and based on the collection and transportation combination - four basic categories were identified. The two/two analytical matrix was used to analyze the four options and choose the model with the best jit through the process of elimination. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)was used to introduce multi criteria decision making method. Similarly, five dominant disposal options were chosen for narrowing down the choices. Use of two/two analytical matrix, AHP, SWOT analysis led to the selection of the best disposal option. Clubbing together the two chosen options, i.e. CaT and the disposal plan formed the complete model of SWM for the city.