Smart waste management systems aim to (i) collect and monitor data from bins (status, temperature, etc.) and trucks (weights) according to differentiated waste collection; (ii) optimize waste collection and management in urban environments using technologies such as IoT sensors, GPS, and data analytics. While these systems offer significant benefits, including operational efficiencies, cost savings, and environmental benefits, they also face several challenges, like, among the others: initial investment, technology adoption and integration, maintenance, scalability and flexibility, environmental impact, interoperability. Addressing these challenges requires careful planning, investment, and collaboration among stakeholders, including city planners, technology providers, waste management companies, and the community.
Snap4City can help cities implement cost-effective smart waste management solutions by providing a scalable and modular platform. This allows cities to start small and scale up as needed, potentially reducing initial investments. The platform is designed to be interoperable, allowing for seamless integration with existing waste management systems and other city services. This eases the adoption of smart technologies and enhances their effectiveness through comprehensive data analysis.
Snap4City provides tools for the continuous monitoring and maintenance of IoT devices and sensors and the flexible and scalable architecture allow cities to expand their smart waste management systems as needed. Snap4City supports the addition of new sensors, devices, and functionalities, making it easier to adapt to changing needs, also reaching the policies as Pay As You Throw, PAYT, provided that the bins are controlled with fobs, rfid, etc.
Snap4City has implemented a number of use cases to demonstrate how can support cities in overcoming the challenges associated with smart waste management, by facilitating the integration of IoT technologies, enhancing data security, and promoting citizen engagement, to help cities optimize their waste management practices and move towards a more sustainable future.
Snap4City is capable to identify the bins that risk to become true in advance. On these aspect, the plan for waste collection including the rides can be estimated also exploiting the routing on the basis of the routing service of Snap4City. The path can be provided to map on mobiles and also on the Snap4City mobile Apps of the series "in a Snap". On the basis of the plan, nd the effective waste collection, reports and dashboards can be produced. The actual trends can be daily monitored including the alarms of eventual critical conditions notified from the citizens.
In the following scenario a Smart Waste use case has been explored. The map view shows the different kind of smart waste bins (generic, plastic, paper, glass, metal, organic) with their status (Full, Hal-full, Empty, and/or proportioanlly depicted on the graphic representation). Custom user interface and theme can be defined for each municipality as usual on Snap4City.
A table view allows to go more in deep in the status of each single bin and to see the following details:
- waste kind
- Address
- Percentage of fullness (the cell is colored according to defined threesholds);
- Temperature (the cell is colored according to defined threesholds);
- Group Id of the bin;
- Capacity of the bin;
- Status;
- Date of the last measument.
It is possible to define thresholds for temperature and fullness.
