A spatial decision support system for designing solid waste collection routes in rural counties

Author

Xiaohong Xin

Date of Award

5-1999

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Geography

Major Professor

Bruce Ralston

Committee Members

Thomas Bell, John Rehder

Abstract

Because of the increasing need to develop optimized routes for solid waste collection in rural counties, there has been a lot of research on exploring arc routing problems and their efficient solutions. The complex nature of solving arc routing problems lends itself to a GIS-based spatial decision support system. Such a system could combine user knowledge of a problem with heuristic algorithms to obtain arc routing solutions. This thesis presents SWRoute, which is such a system.

Developing SWRoute requires three major steps: building a suitable geographic data base, determining and implementing the necessary heuristic algorithmic techniques, and setting up a GIS framework that allows users to manipulate the data inputs and the algorithm outputs. Taken together, these three components form a spatial decision support system for designing solid waste collection routes.

The area of study is Hamblen County in East Tennessee. A database of roads in the county was developed using TIGER and other map sources. The demands for solid waste collection were obtained from the Hamblen County solid waste region.

SWRoute also uses two modeling algorithms. The first is a heuristic algorithm for generating solutions to the rural arc routing problem. The second algorithm is used to develop lower bounds on candidate solutions. The lower bounds help determine the quality of the heuristic solutions.

The SWRoute interface has tools which allow the user to partition a base road network into subnetworks and create a seed node set. The GIS interface is also useful for generating and reporting routes. With the aid of these tools, the user can study and manipulate solutions generated from the algorithms.

The results derived from the Hamblen County example indicate how a GIS-based spatial decision support system can help solve complex problems facing rural U.S. counties.

Recommended Citation

Xin, Xiaohong, "A spatial decision support system for designing solid waste collection routes in rural counties. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 1999.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/10056