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Locating Bins using GIS I.A.K.S.Illeperuma1, Dr. Lal Samarakoon2. 1 Senior Lecturer dept. of CPRSG, Faculty of Geomatics 2 Director GIC Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
Abstract In todays world solid waste management is a global environmental issue which creates significant health and environmental risk. This is a crucial problem in Sri Lanka too due to the lack of a proper solid waste management system. This study was conducted to improve the present solid waste management system of Maharagama Urban Council, Sri Lanka using GIS. Sample survey was done to collect the data about amount of waste generated from a house, number of people and income of a family and the households attitude towards Introduction Solid Waste Management (SWM) is a function of combination of various activities such as collection, transportation and disposal of solid waste. It also includes processing and treatment of the solid waste before disposing. (Robinson, 1986). The purpose of SWM is to create uncontaminated environment for people without disturbing natural resources (World resource Foundation, 1996; McDougall et al., 2001) and a proper SWM helps safe disposal, reduction of final waste and increase re-use and recycling. On the other hand a poor management system, on the contrary, leads to a filthy environment affecting the well-being of the people residing therein. At the present all over the world, due to the industrialization, urbanization and uncontrolled urban sprawl and improvement of living conditions and population growth, SWM become a monumental problem. Waste collection, transportation and disposal methods may vary from place to place over the world. SWM system has improved with the help of new technology in developed countries. In Australia urban households have been given a bin to put their waste and those bins are emptied weekly by the local council. (ISWA, UNEP, 2002). the waste from randomly selected houses. GPS survey was carried out to find out the sensitive locations. Model was created to estimate the amount of waste generated from each house. GIS was used to identify the locations for bins and estimate the required capacity of them. It could be found that 1006 bins with 100m service area are required to cover entire area. Key Words: Urban Solid Waste Management (USWM), Bin location, Geographical Information System (GIS), Service area, Global Positioning System (GPS).

Basic measures taken in recent years to control waste management in Japan include: pollution prevention, reuse and recycling, and waste incineration with air pollution control. (Sakai et al., 1996). Netherland government has implemented high land filling tax to make it less interest by the people and incineration of waste is the favored method of waste treatment to reduce environmental risk (Bartelings, 2003). The most popular method of waste disposal in Canadian urban centers is curbside collection. But in rural areas people have to carry their waste to the transfer stations. Then waste from this transfer station is transported to landfill site (ISWA, UNEP, 2002). Studied carried out by Visvanathan et al., 2001 shows that in Asia waste disposal is a serious problem due to uncontrolled and unmonitored urbanization, and lack of financial and human resources trained in SWM system. According to this study the per capita generation of waste in Asian cities rang from 0.2kg/day to 1.7kg/day. Also it highlighted that in Sri Lanka waste generation per capita rang from 0.4 to 0.85kg/day/person

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due to increased consumption patterns as well as the movement of the people from the rural areas to urban centers. In Thailand people are encouraged to waste segregation at the source of waste generation. Therefore wastes are sorted into 3 types: recyclable, food and toxic and dispose them into 3 different dustbins. (Bui Van Ga, 2004). Similarly in many Indian cities and towns, solid waste is normally disposed in an open dump. (Mufeed, 2006). Although collection and disposal of the municipal waste have been improved in Vietnam, there is no safely disposed method. Recycling and reuse in Vietnam is an actively implemented by informal waste pickers (Vietnam Environment Monitor, 2004). Bangladesh is also experiencing the problems of solid waste management. Less than fifty percent of whole waste generated in Dhaka City was collected by Dhaka City Corporation and bins are not located sufficiently along the road. So it can be seen that waste are scattered over the area (Syed, 2006). Similar to most of developing nations, in Sri Lanka, solid waste, especially Urban Solid Waste (USW), is a critical problem and it becomes severe due to absence of proper solid waste management systems in the country. At present recyclable, reusable and organic waste are collected together and being dumped in environmentally very sensitive places like road sides, marshy lands, low lying areas, public places, forest and wild life areas, water courses etc. causing numerous negative environmental impacts (Hazardous Waste Management Unit, 2004). There are no sufficient infrastructure and resources for the SWM in many Urban Councils of the country, and there are no enough and suitable services to dispose most of the solid waste from households and industries. (Levien et al. 2000). With the introduction of new policies for rapid economic changes during the last two decades it can be seen that rapid urbanization and also it is more difficult to find lands for

disposal or waste treatment facilities in urban areas than in rural areas. Therefore people in those areas compelled to dispose their waste in improper manner creating environmental and health hazards. In contrast western province is highly urbanized and densely populated compared with the other provinces in the country. So the waste management problem is more severe in the western province (42 Sri Lanka, 2001). Thereby Colombo is the most severely affected area with the disposal generation of around 1500 tons per day (Perera, 2003). This problem is quite significant in Maharagama Urban Council (UC) which is in Colombo district. To minimize environmental and health hazards it is necessary to locate bins along the roads so that people can find a bin to dispose their waste easily. Therefore this study aims to identify the proper locations for bins along the roads using GIS in the Maharagama UC area. 2. Study Area Maharagama UC is one of the largest Urban Council in Sri Lanka lies in the Colombo district in Western province. It is situated at 6.8460 North latitude and 79.9280 East longitude and is subdivided into 41 GN divisions for administrative purpose (Fig 1). It covers an area of 3775 hectares. Principal towns of the area are Maharagama, Mirihana and Kottawa and it has a population of just over 177000 people. There are about 28000 households in the area. The UC officers were estimating per capita waste generation is around 2.5kg in the area. Rukmale West, Makumbura South and Kottawa East GN divisions and the Wijerama, and Pragathipura GN divisions are the lowest and highest populated GN divisions respectively. Most of the commercial lands and industries are found along main roads. There are more residential lands and relatively less agricultural lands in the area. (Table 1)

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Fig 1. Map of Maharagama UC Area Landuse Barren Cemetry Commercial Industry Marshy land Other agricultural land Paddy Playground Public Religious land Residential land Scrub Water bodies Area (m2) 197016.88 17706.30 820892.91 393868.83 1013882.06 1316884.96 4958619.18 38522.72 867372.81 223419.15 26514910.94 345844.38 327383.73

Table 1. Landuse data of Maharagama UC area From personal communication made with Officials in UC regarding urban solid waste management in Maharagama UC area, it could be known that UC provide polythene bags to householders to collect disposal materials and to deliver these bags to the vehicle at the time of collection or place them by the side of the road closer to their house or put them into the

bin located along the road for the cleaners to collect these bags when they come to collect waste. From the UC officers, it was found that four compactors and two tippers are used in collecting waste along the main streets and ten tractors are used in lanes and small streets where trucks can not approach. Due to the unjustifiable command area of the existing dustbins located along the road, those bins are not used by most of the householders to dispose their waste and instead they use drains, roadside, water bodies or any other improper things. This creates poor sanitary conditions in the area due to animals: goats, dogs, cows, cats, crows etc. foraging for food. Further, this waste may causes to block the drainage system and creates flood during raining seasons making significant inconvenience to people and also stagnant and harmful water pools may form making a better environment for sources of many diseases such as flies, cockroaches, mosquitoes and rodents. When these wastes are rotten and decomposed neighborhood make dirty, bad smelling. Lighter waste materials are observed to have been scattered by animals,

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wind and vehicles adding unpleasant outlook to the area. All the wastes collected from households and other places by UC were transferred to open dump site located at Navinna GN division of the Maharagama UC area. Maharagama UC officials said that then these wastes are sold to the private company. Company people sort them out at the site and bring to their place. In some of the areas wastes are collected by UC very frequently while in some other areas wastes are not collected at all by the UC. If the UC vehicle comes to collect the waste almost all householders are prepared to put their waste into the vehicle. Only the householders of those areas where the UC does not collect waste adopt alternative methods to solve their problem of waste disposal. Followings are the disposal methods used by those people to dispose their waste. 1) Collect and Burn. In this method all types of wastes together collect and burn. 2) Dispose waste into a hole in the garden. People who have enough space to dispose their waste, prepare a hole in their garden and dispose their all waste into this hole. 3) Collect all types of waste under the tree. 4) Plastic / paper/ polythene burn and other waste dispose into a hole in the garden. In this method plastic, paper and polythene waste were separate from household waste and they were burned. Then rest of the waste was disposed into a hole in the garden. 5) Put all waste into the UC vehicle when it comes to collect waste. Inquiries made from officials of the Central Environmental Authority and Maharagama UC, it revealed that government offices and schools have their own procedures to collect waste and they do not use bins located along the roadside to dispose their waste. Everyday UC vehicles go to those places and collect those wastes. Further they stressed that commercial waste too is separately collect by the UC. Therefore in this study consideration was limited only to the residential buildings.

3. Methodology Methodology followed in this study is included conducting questionnaire survey to collect data and GIS based analysis to find proper location for bins along the roads. Procedure of the study can be summarized as in Fig. 2.
GPS Survey Questionnaire Survey

Identify the sensitive areas

Road Network

Models to estimate amount of waste generate from a house

Identify the locations for bins & calculate service area

Determine capacity of bin

Fig. 2. Procedure of the study 3.2 Data collection For this study, data from different sources were collected and were integrated to create database for the study area. Digital maps of Land use/Land cover, road network of the area, streams, water bodies, population density map and foot print of buildings over the area were collected from Road Development Authority of the country. Digital map of building foot print with height attribute was collected from Survey Department of the country. Few questions were prepared to collect the data about amount of waste generated from a house, number of people in a house, income of a family and to have an idea about the peoples attitudes towards the waste. Then using this questionnaire, householders from randomly selected ten houses in each GN division of the Maharagama UC were interviewed. Altogether four hundred and ten households were used for this questionnaire survey. Same time GPS survey was conducted to find the location of

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these houses. Two sample bags which can be filled with one kilogram and half kilogram of waste were used to estimate the weight of waste generated from these households. Showing these bags, householders were asked how many bags of waste are generated from their house. Further to get the location of sensitive areas such as school, religious places etc. where bin should not be located at the close proximity of them, GPS was used. Locations of bus stops over the area were surveyed too. 3.3 Allocation of bins along the road Procedures conducted in this process mainly divided into two. Firstly analysis of sample survey data was done to create models to estimate the number of people in a house and amount of waste generate from a house per day and income of a family. Allocation of bins along the road is the second and main part of this process. Fig. 3 summarized the work flow.

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Landuse data

Building Layer

Model formation

Identify households in residential area

Approximate number of people in each household

Approximate income of each household

Rasterization

Estimation of waste generate from each household

Waste density map

Polygonization

Identify centroids in high density area

Network data set (Road)

Centroids are within sensitive area

No

Centroids are on the road

Yes

Consider centroids as bin location

yes Exclude points

No Shift the points to the closest point on closest road Calculate service area of initial bins

Determine number of houses in each service area

Calculate service area of bins

Locate other bins

Calculate capacity of bins

Fig. 3. Work flow for allocation bin along the roads

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Generally it could be said that amount of waste generated from a house mainly depend on the number of people in that house, education level and income of the family. But household wise information was unavailable to collect. Also it is out of scope to conduct a field survey to gather information from each household in the area as time consuming. Therefore regression analysis was done using sample data to estimate number of inhabitant in a house, income of a family and amount of waste generated from a house per day and Minitab statistical software was used for the analysis. Generally it can be assumed that number of people in a house depends on the education level of the family, size of the house and number of storey in a building. During field survey it was noticed that there were no housing complex in the area and no multi storied houses. Although there are two storied houses, one family with three or four members are living in most of those houses. Therefore a number of storeys in a building were not considered when estimating the number of people in those houses. Since education levels of each and every household of the study area was not available only the size of the house was considered to estimate the number of inhabitant of the family. Regression analysis was done to find out the relationship between Number of people and area of the house. Following equation obtained with P value zero. Number of people = 0.0315 * Area of the house Then this equation was used to estimate the number of people in the house when analysis the whole dataset. With the available data, income of the family is estimated by using the area of the house. Regression analysis was done to find out the relationship between income and the area of the house. Following equation was got with the P value zero and it was used to approximate the income of a family when considered whole dataset.

Income = 208 * Area Finally to create the equation to estimate the amount of waste generated from a house, regression analysis was done following relationship was created. Amount of Waste = 0.174*Number of people in a house + 0.000021*Income In this calculation it is assumed that all people in the house generate equal amount of waste though it depend on various factors. Normally people use a road to go to the bin to dump their waste. Hence the service area of a bin which is a region including the households that dispose waste to the bin in consideration can not be a circular area. In GIS software Network Analyst function facilitate to find service area of a particular distance around any location on a network. A network service area is an area that covers all accessible roads which are passing through that location and have specified length. As an example, in Fig. 4-B brown colored area is a 100m service area of a bin calculated using network analyst function of ARC GIS software without using trim length. This area covers all road sections which are passing through the bin location with 100 meter length from the bin and service area polygon is created by joining end point of these roads. Therefore this service area polygon may exclude some householders who can reach to this bin by walking maximum distance of 100 meters or less than 100 meters. In Fig. 4-A service area of a bin was calculated same as in Fig. 4-B but using trim length. Therefore this polygon covers more householders who can reach to this bin by walking 100 meters or less than 100 meters. Therefore this method was used to calculate the service area of a bin in this study.

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100m

Fig. 4. 100m service area polygon As a first step of determining service area polygons of bins, Network data set which is made of network elements: edges, junction and turn has to be created. Then service area analysis layer has to be created to determine the service area polygon of each bin. Fig. 5 shows input and outputs of service area analysis layer. edges of the polygon to a specified distance are input of the service area analysis layer. From questionnaire survey data it could be found that 98%of the householders maximum preferable walking distance to the bin to dispose their waste is 100m. Therefore bins were located at the maximum preferable walking distance of 100 meters by computing service area of the each bin, considering road network data. 20m buffer zones were created around schools and religious places and 30 meters buffer zones were created around water features to avoid locating bin at the close proximity of them. Though people requested to keep a bin near to the bus stop, four meter buffer was created around bus stop to avoid locating bin very closer to them. As a guide to locate initial bins, waste density map is prepared to identify the high density waste generation area and first bins were located at the centroids of the high density area. First step of doing this, waste generation point map is converted to raster map with cell size 100m and cell value of this raster map calculate as bellow. Cell Value = Sum of the attribute of all the points within the cell Where attribute is amount of waste generate from the point. Then waste density map was prepared using the following equation. Waste Density = Cell Value / Area of the cell

Network data set

Input

Network location (Bin locations) Service area polygons

Outputs

Roads within each service area polygon

Fig. 5. Input and outputs of service area analysis layer Impedance which is cost attribute of traversing along road, polygon break which is extent of the service area to be calculated and trim polygon length is a length that trims the

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To identify the centroids of the high density areas this density map was polygonized and polygons with their centroids at the high density areas were shown in the Fig. 6. Then centroid of this high density area was considered as location of the bins and check whether they are within

the buffer zones of sensitive area or not. Centroids which are in buffer zones were excluded. However bin should be located along the roadside. Therefore to check whether the other centroid points are on the road, they were overlay with the road network.

Fig. 6. Polygons with their centroid over the high waste density area. If a road crosses over the centroid points then centroid location is considered as a bin location. If not firstly locate the point at centroid then it is shifted to the closest point on the closest road of that point. It was done by drawing a perpendicular line from the centroid to the closest road. Then the intersection point of that line and road was consider as the location of the bin since it is the most closest point on the road to that particular centroid. Thereby service areas of these bins were calculated by using network analysis. To locate the next bins trial and error method is used with the aim of avoiding much overlapping of the service areas, cover more areas and all the sections of the road network by service area. If these points produce satisfactory results, then proceed to find the location of the next bin. Self judgment will be applied to select a location for the bin. This way all the points will be located (Fig. 7.).

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Fig. 7. Location of bins along the roads After locating bins, amount of waste generated within service areas of each bin which is the capacity of bins to collect the waste within a day can be easily determined with ARC GIS software. This is the capacity of bins to collect the waste within a day. There by considering present waste collection frequency by UC, capacity of bins were determined. All these methods create environmental and air pollution and create an inviting environment for such pests as flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, rats etc. Therefore the danger of spreading diseases like Dengue, Malaria, Brain fever, Pylaria etc. is there too. People in this area adapted to these disposal methods since there is no proper waste collection procedure by the UC. Hence it is necessary to locate bins along the road so that people can find the bin easily to dispose their waste. Using Network Analysis function in ARC GIS software 1006 bins were located to cover entire area (Fig. 9). Thereby amount of waste generated within service areas of each bin were determined. Fig. 10 bellow shows the amount of waste generated within each of the service area per day. According to the Fig. 10, amount of waste gathered into a bin per day range from three kilograms to hundred kilograms in the UC area. Bins with same capacity can be located along the roadside. Then there might be some bins which get filled within a day or even in a less time while some bins get filled in two days or take even more time. So capacity of the bin determines the waste removal frequency of the bin too. Then when deciding the capacity of the bins it is better to consider the frequency of waste removal from bin and optimum path of the UC vehicles to transport the waste from bin to landfill site too.

4. Results and discussion From questionnaire survey data analysis it could be found that mainly three methods are used to dispose the household waste in this area (Fig. 8).
Disposal m ethods practice in the Area

12.9%

21.7%

65.4%

Category Burn Open dumping Put into the UC vehicle

Fig. 8. Disposal methods

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Fig. 9 Location of bins along the road

Fig. 10. Amount of waste generated within service area polygon per day

From the questionnaire survey it could be seen that in some of the areas wastes are collected by UC very frequently while in some other areas wastes are not collected at all by the UC. Table 2 given bellow shows

that the percentage of households of different frequencies of waste collection by the UC. Fig.11 shows the frequencies of household waste collection by the UC in different GN divisions.

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Frequent of waste collect Every other day Once a week Twice a week Not collected by UC

% of Households 4.88 53.17 7.32 34.63

Table 2 Frequent of waste is collected by the UC and percentage of households

Fig. 11 Frequency of households waste collection by the UC (Households shown in the figure are houses used for questionnaire survey)

It is necessary to make an arrangement to extend the present waste collection procedure to cover entire area. Further waste cannot keep in the bin for long time it better to collect waste from bin twice a week. With this

waste collection frequency required capacity of each bin to accommodate waste dispose by the people within the service area polygon each bin is shown in the Fig. 12.

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Fig. 12. Capacity of bin 5 Conclusion Service area of a bin can be calculated accurately using Network Analysis function in GIS software instead of creating circular buffer around it. Therefore it can be conclude that GIS can be used to locate bins along roads accurately based on road network.

Further in this study amount of waste generate within the service area of a bin was determined with the help of GIS. Also it can be conclude that GIS based computation for waste generation estimation can ensure accurate design of capacity of bins.

References. Bui Van Ga. Urban Solid Waste Treatment and Landfill Siting for Danang City. Environmental Protection Research Centre, Danang Unversity.2004 Bartelings H. Municipal Solid Waste Management problems, an applied general Equilibrium Analysis. PhD Thesis. Wageningen University. 2003 Hazardous Waste Management Unit, Technical Guidelines on Municipal Solid Waste Management. Environmental Pollution Control Division, Central Environmental Authority. 2004 ISWA, UNEP. Industry as a partner for Sustainable Development: waste management. United Kingdom.2002

Levein van Zon and Nalaka Siriwardana.2000. Garbage in Sri Lanka. Integrated Resources Management Programme in Wetlands, Sri Lanka, Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherland. Mufeed Sharholya, Kafeel Ahmada , R.C. Vaishyab and R.D. Guptab . 2006. Municipal solid waste characteristics and management in Allahabad, India. aDepartment of Civil Engineering, Jamia Millia Islamia (Central University), Jamia Nagar, New Delhi 110025, India, bDepartment of Civil Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (Deemed University), Allahabad 211004, Uttar Pradesh, India McDougall, F.R., White, P.R., Franke, M., Hindle, P. Integrated Solid Waste Management: A Lifecycle Inventory, Blackwell Science, London. 2001

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Perera K.L.S. An Overview of the Issue of Solid Waste Management in Sri Lanka in proceedings of the third International Conference on Environment and Health, Chennai, India. December 2003. pp 346-352. Robinson, W.D. 1986. The Solid Waste Handbook: A Practical Guide, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, . Sakai, Shinichi, Municipal Solid Waste Management in Japan. Environment preservation centre. Kyoto University, Japan 1996. Syed Mahmood Anwar. 2006. Solid waste Management and GIS. The Mphil Thesis available at http://www.smabd.com/swmandgis.htm (Retrieved on 21.05.2007) Vietnam Environment Monitor, 2004. Report on Solid Waste prepared by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MONRE), the World Bank, and the WasteEcon Project (funded by CIDA) 42 Sri Lanka, 2001. STATE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 2001 available at http://www.rrcap.unep.org/reports/soe/srilank a_waste.pdf (Retrieved on 24.08.2007)