MODELLING SPATIAL VARIATION OF COLLECTED WASTE IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS USING GIS

Abstract

Municipal solid waste collection constitutes one of the most pressing issues in
developing countries. In recent years the continuous increase in solid waste has
been observed with the increase in population growth. Several studies have
applied Geographic Information Systems in waste management. Existing
research has however concentrated on waste generation and disposal and a few
studies focused on collection systems. In this study we determine how collected
waste varies using GIS. The relationship between collected waste and other
variables such as affluence, population and road density were also tested. We
found that collected waste does vary in urban environments and the variation is
significantly related to affluence (r=-0.3382, p=0.009) population (r=0.536,
p=0.001) and road density (r=0.391, p=0.07). We recommend that in the
future resource allocation for solid waste collection should also incorporate the
variables tested in this study.