The investigation of a class of capacitated arc routing problems: the collection of garbage in developing countries

The collection, transport and disposal of solid waste, which is a highly visible and important municipal service, involves a large expenditure but receives, scant attention. This problem is even more crucial for large cities in developing countries due to the hot weather. A constructive heuristic which takes into account the environmental aspect as well as the cost is proposed to solve the routing aspect of garbage collection. This is based on a look-ahead strategy which is enhanced by two additional mechanisms. Interesting results were obtained when tested on instances with and without the presence of the effect of the environment. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.