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

Abstract

The collection, transport and disposal of solid waste, which is a highly visible and important municipal service, involves a large expenditure but receives, scant attention. This problem is even more crucial for large cities in developing countries due to the hot weather. A constructive heuristic which takes into account the environmental aspect as well as the cost is proposed to solve the routing aspect of garbage collection. This is based on a look-ahead strategy which is enhanced by two additional mechanisms. Interesting results were obtained when tested on instances with and without the presence of the effect of the environment.