Analyzing policy impact potential for municipal solid waste management decision-making: A case study of Taiwan

In the past 20 years, municipal solid waste policies have changed in response to societal and environmental changes. Municipal solid waste policies in many countries become more complicated and numerous. This paper reviews several models developed to support decision making in the area of municipal solid waste management (MSWM). It has been discovered that many modem decision-making support systems are already partially considering social factor analysis in addition to expenses and benefits, environmental effects, technical issues, and management aspects. However, questions are raised as to whether these analyses are sufficient and whether they can predict future possible impacts. This research studies Taiwan's major municipal solid waste policies in the past 10 years and discovers that there is still a great deal of uncertainty associated with policy implementation, even when the effects of factors related to environmental, economic, social, technological, and management aspects have been considered. The purpose of this study is to develop a decision-making model of MSWM to resolve the insufficiencies in policy impact analysis used for decision-making. The policy impact potential analysis method is developed to predict the possible impacts of a policy on particular alternatives; subsequently, a novel decision-making model for waste management is formed. A case study of fly ash management in Taiwan is presented to demonstrate the practicality of this model. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.