Currently, the problem of organizing a municipal solid waste management system (MSW) has become more acute in Russian regions and all over the world. Various environmental and economic problems, as well as problems related to public health negatively affect many aspects of the development of modern society. Therefore, the careful organization of the management of the MSW management system is of great social importance and needs constant improvement. In this paper, we look at the MSW management system from the point of various scientific approaches, namely, structural analysis methods, geoinformation technology methods, reliability theory for complex technical systems, evergetics, graph theory and fuzzy logic methods, including the apparatus of linguistic variables. The purpose of the work is to show the possibility of application and systematic combination of the above scientific methods that have proven themselves well in their fields to a new area of the MSW management systems. However, just application of these approaches is impossible without their further adaptation and systematization from the point of view of existing approaches to the management of similar systems. As part of this study, elements of the MSW management system were identified and a topological model of the system was developed. Structural-logical models of reliability at various levels of abstraction were also built.
These days, one of the most pressing issues, both for Russia and its entities, are problems in the field of environmental protection. Despite the fact that in recent years various environmental organizations have positively influenced the current situation, there have been no qualitative changes in improving the environmental situation. One of the most pernicious and most dangerous in terms of environmental impact problems is the irrational and unstructured waste management.
Currently, the problem of collection, removal, storage
and disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) has become
more acute in most regions of Russia. On average, about
400 kg of waste generated per year falls on one resident of
a metropolis [
The imperfect organization of the MSW management system can create a number of issues, both for different sectors of the national economy, the environment, and for the population. In particular, the accompanying problems of a poorly organized system of MSW management are the emergence of natural dumps, overflow of existing landfills for MSW storage and fatal effects on the ecosystem caused by harmful emissions into the atmosphere. All this directly affects the occurrence of serious health problems in the population due to the deterioration of the environmental situation, sanitary and hygienic living conditions of the population and the emergence of factors contributing to the formation of an unfavorable psychosocial environment for the people.
The events of recent days (the COVID-19 pandemic) have vividly indicated that when assessing alternative options for building sociotechnical systems from the standpoint of functional safety, it is necessary to assess the possible consequences of negative events, not only those that previously took place, but also those that can only happen.
The works of many researchers have been devoted to
the development of methodological and theoretical
foundations for the management of functional safety of
subject-centric systems [
This work looks at one of the approaches to the study
of the MSW management system, which can be considered
as an element in the system of constructing barriers (the
issue of building barriers is considered more fully, for
example, in [
The management of MSW in the region should begin
with the organization of a unified system of production
accounting for waste, which is the primary information
flow [
The MSW management system is a subject-centric
complex technical system. The main elements of a MSW
management system are waste sorting stations, waste
recycling stations, and landfills located in a specific area.
At the same time, a critical factor in the effectiveness of
the MSW management system is the attitude of various
target groups of subjects: the population; representatives
of authorities; business representatives; scientists; public
figures. This necessitates the consideration of the
subjective component in the study of the MSW
management systems. And finally, when studying the
MSW management system, it is necessary to take into
account that it is a geotechnical object, i.e. a
geographically distributed system with a unique
combination of natural and technogenic components
throughout the territory [
Hence, firstly, there are reasons to adapt approaches
that are well established in other applied fields of research
of complex subject-centric technical systems into the field
of MSW management [
The most famous metaphor representing the essence of
“barrier thinking” is proposed in 1990 by the British
scientist J. Reason. This model has found application in
solving various problems of managing complex
subjectcentric systems of different classes and is widely used in
areas such as risk management for aviation, engineering,
and medicine [
The results presented below were obtained in relation to the MSW management system utilized in the Republic of Bashkortostan.
The territorial waste management system is made up of waste producers such as municipal districts (MO); waste processing structures like waste sorting stations (МСС); waste recycling stations (МПС), waste landfills (П); waste collection and transportation services.
To highlight the elements of the MSW management
system, the following basic principles of the analysis of
territorial systems are used. These principles are the
principle of logical completeness in a functional sense and
the principle of transport accessibility [
Following the principle of logical completeness, the
purpose of the MSW management system is to directly
organize the collection, transportation and further
processing (disposal) of waste. Consequently, the
elements of the system will be waste producers, in this case
of municipal districts, waste processing enterprises, here
they are waste sorting stations (МСС), waste recycling
stations (МПС) and waste landfills (П). These elements
ensure the implementation of the goal of the MSW
management system [
The nature of the relations of the elements with each other should be clarified: at the level of municipal districts, the regional operator collects the waste generated by households and enterprises, and thereby solves the logically completed task: to collect all MSW from the territory. The collected waste is sent to waste sorting stations for the separation of MSW by hazard types and classes for their further disposal at specialized waste processing enterprises or directly at landfills. There may be cases of transportation of waste for temporary storage at landfills in cases of temporary inability of the МСС and the МПС to accept MSW due to the overflow or in the case of technical or other equipment failures. Therefore, a separate functional task is the transportation of MSW, which makes it possible to distinguish the transport network as the element of the system.
Consider the MSW collection and transportation system: we will designate all waste producers of a specific municipal entity as МО, waste sorting stations as MCC, waste recycling stations as МПС, and landfills as П. Also, we will consider the main links of the waste transportation chain: from the municipality to the landfill (МО → П); from the landfill to the waste sorting station (П → МСС); from the waste sorting station to the waste recycling station (МСС → МПС).
As an example, we will consider municipalities of the Yanaul, Krasnokamsky, Kaltasinsky, Buraevsky, Tatyshlinsky and Baltachevsky municipal districts of the Republic of Bashkortostan (Fig. 1).
Let's define the conventions for the following municipalities: Yanaul (МО1), Neftekamsk (МО2), Agidel (МО3), Krasnokholmsky (МО4), Verhnie Tatyshly (МО5), Staroboltachevo (МО6), Buraevo (МО7). The proposed routes for transporting MSW from municipalities (МО) to waste sorting stations (МСС) are presented in Figure 2.
To highlight elements of the MSW management system, we use a functional approach.
From the point of view of functional completeness and indivisibility, the following groups of elements of the waste management system can be distinguished: 〈{МО}, {R}, {МСС}, {МПП}, {П}〉.
The objects of the system are: {МО} is a set of municipalities (nodes of the graph); {R} is a set of transportation routes connecting objects (edges of the graph); {МСС} is a set of waste sorting stations (nodes of the graph); {МПП} is a set of waste recycling stations (nodes of the graph); {П} is a set of polygons (nodes of the graph).
We will transform the topological model of the MSW collection and transportation system to the form of a graph that reflects the various communication routes (roads) between the МО, П, and МСС (Fig. 3).
The results obtained form the basis for further use of formal methods of structural reliability analysis.
The works on the theory of reliability for technical systems emphasize that the formulation of the concept of “failure” is the basis for building models of reliability for technical systems.
Due to the complexity of the MSW management system, as well as its multi-level structure, the definition of the element failure concept will be different for each level of the MSW management system, namely the level of the municipality, the level of the regional operator and the level of the region. Therefore, for each formulation of the concept of failure, there will be its own model of system reliability. МО2 МО3 МО1 МО4 МО7 МО6 МО5 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 R10 R11 R12 R13 R14 R15 R16 R17 П(F) П(C) П(D) П(B) П(A)
R18 R19 R20 R21 R22 МСС
Munilaciypearlities Landfill layer Wstaatsitoenssolratyinegr Fig. 3. Model of the network structure of the MSW collection and transportation system Structural logical model of reliability at the level of container sites
At the level of container sites, the refusal will mean the following: 1) inability of the regional MSW management operator to organize the collection of MSW from the container sites (special sites for bulky waste, the territory adjacent to the place of garbage loading) due to reasons such as the absence of a container on the site , lack of access to the container on the site, overflow of containers installed on the site in at least for one household; 2) inability of the regional MSW management operator to collect MSW from container sites due to the absence or improper state of roads at least for one household.
At this level of abstraction, the functional elements of the system will be {МО, R}, where МО refers to a container site for collecting MSW for a municipality, and {R} means transport routes between container sites for collecting MSW and waste sorting stations or landfills.
Based on the defined definitions, the container site may be associated with structural-logical model (Fig. 4). МО
R / Structural logical model of reliability at the level of the municipality
In the case of many sites and several roads from container sites to waste sorting stations or landfills with the same wording of the concept of failure, the structural logical model accepts the one presented in Figure 5. This model considers the fact that before the container site i (МОi) can be reached in different ways {Ri, j}. R i,j-1
R i,j R 1,j-1
R 1,j МО1 МОi /
The basis for obtaining quantitative estimates of
reliability indicators based on structural logical schemes is
the use of failure probabilities (fail-free operation) of the
elements that make up the scheme. When analyzing the
reliability of technical systems, reliability indicators are
either presented in the passport data for the elements or can
be obtained through specially organized tests. When
analyzing MSW management systems, it is not possible to
obtain reliability indicators through the above approaches.
For that reason, it is proposed to use the approach
described in [
C1 unlikely
C2 likely
C3 impossible /
For the example in Figure 6, the final estimate would be min {unlikely, likely, impossible} =impossible. For the example in Figure 7, the final score would be max {unlikely, likely, impossible} =likely. The use of linearly ordered linguistic variables makes it possible to obtain qualitative estimates of the reliability characteristics for models of container sites and municipalities.
The proposed approach, based on a systematic combination of the geographic information technologies, the apparatus of the theory of reliability, and the apparatus of linguistic scales allows to obtain qualitative estimates of reliability of the waste management system components. This makes it possible to formalize the procedure for comparing alternative options for the location of elements of the MSW management system at the early stages of designing geotechnical systems. The proposed approach is one of the practical methods for implementing barrier thinking in a as socially significant area as waste management.
The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 18-08-00885.