Sustainable fuzzy multi-trip location-routing problem for medical waste management during the COVID-19 outbreak

2021-02-01
Tirkolaee, Erfan Babaee
Abbasian, Parvin
Weber, Gerhard Wilhelm
The performance of waste management system has been recently interrupted and encountered a very serious situation due to the epidemic outbreak of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). To this end, the handling of infectious medical waste has been particularly more vital than ever. Therefore, in this study, a novel mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed to formulate the sustainable multi-trip location-routing problem with time windows (MTLRP-TW) for medical waste management in the COVID-19 pandemic. The objectives are to concurrently minimize the total traveling time, total violation from time windows/service priorities and total infection/environmental risk imposed on the population around disposal sites. Here, the time windows play a key role to define the priority of services for hospitals with a different range of risks. To deal with the uncertainly, a fuzzy chance-constrained programming approach is applied to the proposed model. A real case study is investigated in Sari city of Iran to test the performance and applicability of the proposed model. Accordingly, the optimal planning of vehicles is determined to be implemented by the municipality, which lakes 19.733 h to complete the processes of collection, transportation and disposal. Finally, several sensitivity analyses are performed to examine the behavior of the objective functions against the changes of controllable parameters and evaluate optimal policies and suggest useful managerial insights under different conditions. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT

Suggestions

Assessment of PCB contamination, the potential for in situ microbial dechlorination and natural attenuation in an urban watershed at the East Coast of the United States
Kaya, Devrim; Sowers, Kevin R.; Demirtepe, Hale; Stiell, Brian; Baker, Joel E.; İmamoğlu, İpek; Kjellerup, Birthe (Elsevier BV, 2019-09-15)
Sediment contamination is a major environmental issue in many urban watersheds and coastal areas due to the potential toxic effects of contaminants on biota and human health. Characterizing and delineating areas of sediment contamination and toxicity are important goals of coastal resource management in terms of ecological and economical perspectives. Core and surficial sediment samples were collected from an industrialized urban watershed at the East Coast of the United Stated and analyzed to evaluate the ...
Managing aquatic ecosystems and water resources under multiple stress - An introduction to the MARS project
Hering, Daniel; Carvalho, Laurence; Argillier, Christine; Beklioğlu, Meryem; Borja, Angel; Cardoso, Ana Cristina; Duel, Harm; Ferreira, Teresa; Globevnik, Lidija; Hanganu, Jenica; Hellsten, Seppo; Jeppesen, Erik; Kodes, Vit; Solheim, Anne Lyche; Noges, Tiina; Ormerod, Steve; Panagopoulos, Yiannis; Schmutz, Stefan; Venohr, Markus; Birk, Sebastian (Elsevier BV, 2015-01-15)
Water resources globally are affected by a complex mixture of stressors resulting from a range of drivers, including urban and agricultural land use, hydropower generation and climate change. Understanding how stressors interfere and impact upon ecological status and ecosystem services is essential for developing effective River Basin Management Plans and shaping future environmental policy. This paper details the nature of these problems for Europe's water resources and the need to find solutions at a rang...
Two-Phase Thermophilic Acidification and Mesophilic Methanogenesis Anaerobic Digestion of Waste-Activated Sludge
Demirer, Göksel Niyazi; Othman, Maazuza (Mary Ann Liebert Inc, 2008-01-01)
Biological pretreatment methods of waste-activated sludge (WAS) have recently received attention because of their efficiency and relatively low investment. The application of hydrolysis/acidification step before methanization in anaerobic digestion or the two-phase anaerobic digestion process constitutes one of these methods. Two phase (thermophilic acidification and mesophilic methanogenesis) anaerobic digestion of WAS was investigated and reported to perform better in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD)...
A Laboratory Column Investigation for the Treatment of Cr(VI) with Zero-Valent Iron
Uyusur, Burcu; Ünlü, Kahraman (Mary Ann Liebert Inc, 2009-02-01)
Permeable reactive barrier (PRB) technology is commonly placed in the list of options for groundwater remediation at hazardous waste sites, where Cr(VI) treatment in groundwater has been a concern more than any other inorganic contaminants. The objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and longevity of Cr(VI) removal with zero-valent iron based PRBs. The main focus was on two parameters affecting the performance of Cr(VI) removal with PRBs: (1) amount of reactive media and (2) groundwater...
Control of trichloroethylene emissions from sparging systems by horizontal bio- and chemo-barriers
Tezel, U; Demirer, Göksel Niyazi; Uludag-Demirer, S (Informa UK Limited, 2005-02-01)
The scope of this study was to develop a continuous system to clean-up a trichloroethylene (TCE) contaminated gas stream, where biotic and abiotic removal mechanisms are undertaken sequentially simulating the horizontal bio- and chemo-barriers proposed for the in-situ remediation of the contaminated sites. The bio- and chemo-barriers were simulated by using glass columns packed with granular anaerobic mixed culture and Fe(0) filings, respectively. The effect of gas residence time, which is adjusted by the g...
Citation Formats
E. B. Tirkolaee, P. Abbasian, and G. W. Weber, “Sustainable fuzzy multi-trip location-routing problem for medical waste management during the COVID-19 outbreak,” SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT, pp. 0–0, 2021, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/88588.