Land use based modelling of Solid Waste generation for Sustainable Residential Development in Small/Medium Scale Urban Areas

Municipal solid waste management has become a serious concern in India, and for efficient management, it is important that accurate methods are developed for estimating solid waste types, quantities and its distribution. Objective of this research paper, which is based on a HUDCO funded project, is to understand how residential land use and associated activities' based specific key generators of solid waste in a small/medium scale urban area are related to the quantity of waste generated and thereby to model the same. The study is aimed at deriving a more rational method to estimate quantity of solid waste generated type-wise, in place of the per capita based en-bloc estimation system practiced at present. Criticality of residential land-use and related generators are identified through a Delphi/AHP based expert survey process. Their relationship to waste generation is established based on the field survey conducted in 2 select wards of three cities namely Thiruvananthapuram, Coimbatore and Kozhikode in South India. The sample size was 150 households/ward. The results show that when solid waste estimation based on land use parameters is attempted for residential land-use, not only factors like household size, and income matter but also factors like housing typology, floor area of the residence and lifestyle of the family etc. have a decisive role to play. In its results part, the paper presents models for estimating solid waste for residential land-use based on the critical generator parameters with established correlation. Then the paper discusses the survey based validation results of the models. In conclusion, the paper briefly outlines a system that can be developed to estimate solid waste generation at an appropriate level with superior quantitative and qualitative precision of waste estimation. It can have immense application in waste management related capacity building and in formulating suitable policy guidelines. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.