Best Practices in e-Governance

Ministry of Urban Development

Solid Waste Management –“GPS & GIS enabled”

Management of Solid Waste in an efficient manner is one of the key challenges our cities are
facing. For any given city, its management in environment friendly manner is a daunting task.
Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules 2000, framed by Supreme Court Committee on
Municipal Solid Waste, has been referred as landmark rules in Indian urban scenario. Until the
end of last Century, in Indian urban scenario, it was considered as one sector where technology
intervention was minimal and was process oriented in nature.

Creeping in of information technology in Municipal Solid Waste Management (SWM) sector

has equipped this sector with better management of this crucial mandatory functions under the
urban domain, as per 12th Schedule of 74th CAA. Better management of SWM includes GPS
based vehicle tracking system, tracking clearance of secondary collection points, GIS based
shortest route identification to landfill / dumping site etc.

Process Overview:
Solid Waste Management is one the basic services provided by Health Section of the ULBs. The
section is headed by the Health Officer. The solid waste management process involves the:
 Garbage lifting, transporting, disposal and Tracking of various locations
 Allocation of employees for sweeping and garbage removal and cleaning of drains
 Allocation of the vehicles for garbage transportation and disposal at the dumping
ground
 Management and monitoring of activities

The Solid Waste Management process has been divided into following sub-processes:
 Scheduling of resources & vehicles for collection, transportation & dumping
 Primary collection from door to door and after sweeping of roads
 Filling of petroleum from depot
 Lifting of solid waste from collection points
 Transportation to land fill sites
 Weighing of garbage to be dumped

Existing Situation:
Today a key challenge faced by municipal bodies is efficient delivery of SWM services. Some
of the major problems faced in SWM by municipal bodies are listed below.
 Tracking, monitoring, planning and management of vehicles/ resources is tedious.
Best Practices in e-Governance
Ministry of Urban Development

 Trip planning can be performed based on the shortest route as visualized routes are not
available.
 Difficulty in tracking the non-compliance to the schedules
 Difficulty in locating the bins in a manual process
 Difficulty to monitor actual pick up of the waste from the assigned bins/locality and
dumping in the dumping yards
 Difficulty in preparing status reports as it is a manual process and takes a lot of time
 Difficulty in addressing to citizens complaints related to SWM within stipulated time
All the above-mentioned limitations for Solid Waste Management will be taken care with
implementing the essentials for e-Governance.

Essentials for implementing e-Governance

Essentials pertaining to Solid Waste Management process using ICT are as follows:
a. Input
 GIS location & co-ordinates of bins and dumping sites
 GPS enabled vehicles
 System for automation of fees calculation by identification of trip starting point using
GPS readings collected during the vehicle passage
 Automated mechanism to record the volume of landfill sites
 Computerization of weighbridge
 Automatic data transfer to database from various devices
 Centralized database for storage of repositories for easy reference & instant retrieval

b. Process
 100% of the bins and land fill sites with details to be mapped on GIS/ MIS map
 Auto generation of status (Bins Picked/ Bins unpicked) thus providing online
monitoring mechanism
 Generation of schedules at the spur as and when required
 Automated workflow with online approval mechanism
 Facilities for online payment calculation for garbage collected and automatic update in
database
 Optimizing the shortest path from the collection point to the dumping yard
 Optimizing the number of collection points & transport of garbage
 Software application to generate automated alerts for deviations
Best Practices in e-Governance
Ministry of Urban Development

c. Output
 Automatic generation of MIS reports
 Proper tracking & monitoring of resources and quick decisions making
 Maximizing the collection coverage and transportation of garbage from collection
points to dump yards

d. Others
 Facility for status tracking
 Online payment facilities
Benefits:
The following are the benefits that can be envisaged from the GPS & GIS enabled Solid Waste
Management System.
 Eliminate the human factor from entire cycle of SWM process starting from collection
to bill disposal
 A surveillance system for monitoring the movement of the vehicle using GPS/GIS and
GSM mobile communication technologies
 Monitoring of the vehicle in real time to improve per vehicle productivity & decrease
non-compliance
 Monitoring the status of bins
 Availability of MIS for effective planning of resources, schedule & unforeseen events
 Greater transparency in the civic administration
Best Practices in e-Governance
Ministry of Urban Development

Case : Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation

Pimpri-Chinchwad is one of the cities who has done pioneering task of monitoring its SWM
services through the use of ICT.

Brief:
The city of Pimpri-Chinchwad located northwest of Pune, has an area 171 sq. km. with an
estimated population of over 12.5 lakhs. Administratively, the entire city is divided into four
wards. With a high demographic growth of around 100% in the last two decades and more than
150% in the previous decades, the city’s service levels have been severely strained.

Prior to having the proposed ICT based SWM system in place, the situation at PCMC was as
follows:
 Monitoring of actual pick-up of the waste from the assigned bins/locality and the same
was recorded purely on manual recording basis.
 Monitoring actual movement of the fleet and its productivity i.e. no. of bins picked by
each vehicle on schedule basis.
 Processes for validating the productivity of the fleet and payments were done purely
based on manual records of no. of trips made by each vehicle.
 Difficulty in tracking the non-compliance to the schedules
 Difficulty in locating the bins in a manual process
 Difficulty in monitoring actual pick up of the waste from the assigned bins/locality and
dumping in the dumping yards and recoding of data is a manual process
 Difficulty in preparing status reports as it is a manual process and takes a lot of time

Aim of the Initiative:

In order to overcome the above mentioned problems, Commissioner, Medical Officer of Health
& Computer Officer considered various solutions like GPS based vehicle tracking system, RFID
based tracking of bins with respect to vehicles, Surveillance camera installed around bin
location. . The goal was to:
 Monitor real time movement of the vehicle and improve per vehicle productivity
 Monitor the bin pick up adherence and improve city cleaning service levels and PCMC
governance image
PCMC deployed GPS based vehicle tracking system due to low capital cost of deployment and
ease of operation.
Best Practices in e-Governance
Ministry of Urban Development

Implementation Strategy:
A step by step implementation strategy was followed at PCMC
 Step 1: Selection of technology partner
 Step 2: Installation of GPS system on waste collection vehicles
 Step 3: Geo Coding of bins across the city
 Step 4: Development of web based application and public information system
 Step 5: Stabilization of system and training to stake holders

Brief on Solid Waste Management – “GPS & GIS enabled”

Geo coding (geo coordinates) of the all the bins (around 1279) across the city were marked on
the GIS mapping database and real time vehicle movement (GPS location of the vehicle on
which a GPS device was installed) were monitored against them as per route. Overall city vide
75 different routes were identified and geo coded with GIS map. An intelligence algorithm/logic
was developed in web based application to flag the bin as “Served”, when a waste collector
vehicle stops near a
bin within a specified
distance for a
sufficient period.
Using this data, a web
based application was
developed to monitor
the waste pick
performance by
PCMC officials and
an extended status
view was also
developed at the PCMC website for citizen to view the status (Bin served or not served) online
for their own locality

Key Contributors:
 Leadership of Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation
 Departments and the employees
 Implementing Agency
Best Practices in e-Governance
Ministry of Urban Development

Achievements:
By deploying GPS based real time vehicle tracking system PCMC is able to:
 Monitor the actual
movement and real
time position of the
vehicle
 Analyze the bin pick
up status such as
bins picked
up/served on not
picked up/served in
real time.
 Improve service
delivery mechanism
and achieve better information management
 Ensure citizens’ participation in governance and arrive at the performance level of each
waste collecting vehicle
 Reducing the unwanted trips/detours/stoppages and enhance the productivity/utilization
of the fleet
 Generate MIS and exception report to take informed decision
 On the public service front, PCMC offered the “Bin Pick up Status’ over internet to
public website
http://www.pcm
cindia.gov.in,
where any
citizen can
select its own
locality bin and
visually see the
pick up status
 Improve public
image and also
offered a tool
for RTI
Best Practices in e-Governance
Ministry of Urban Development

 Timely completion of job with greater efficiency

 Greater transparency in the civic administration.
 GPRS enabled mobile device for officers to track the service from anywhere & anytime.
 Measuring service level with benchmarks, making it compulsory to each ULB to
achieve the benchmarks
 Greater accountability on field level staff.

Lessons Learnt
Though there was a clear cut implementation strategy in place, a number of key challenges were
faced such as:
 Accurately geo-code all the bin locations of the city
 Establish the intelligent algorithm/logic for flagging the bin served/ un-served
 Initial resistance from operative staff for deployment of such technology