Cloud-based smart waste management for smart cities

Abstract

With the ever increasing population, urbanization, migration issues, and change in lifestyle, municipal solid waste generation levels are increasing significantly. Hence, waste management becomes a challenge faced not only by the developing nations, but also the developed and advanced countries. The overall waste management involves three main types of entities: 1) users who generate waste, 2) waste collectors/city admin., 3) stakeholders. Waste management directly effects the lifestyle, healthcare, environment, recycling and disposal, and several other industries. Current waste management trends are not sophisticated enough to achieve a robust and efficient waste management mechanism. It is very important to have a smart way of managing waste, so that not only the waste status is notified in-time when to be collected, but also, all the stakeholders are made aware in timely fashion that what type of waste in what quantity is coming up at what particular time. This will not only help in attracting and identifying stakeholders, but also aids in creating more effective ways of recycling and minimizing waste also making the overall waste management more efficient and environment friendly. Keeping all this in mind, we propose a cloud-based smart waste management mechanism in which the waste bins are equipped with sensors, capable of notifying their waste level status and upload the status to the cloud. The stakeholders are able to access the desired data from the cloud. Moreover, for city administration and waste management, it will be possible to do route optimization and select path for waste collection according to the statuses of waste bins in a metropolis, helping in fuel and time efficiency.