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 12 th Schedule of 74 th 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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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