e-Garbage, an intelligent system of management of waste collection

Waste is an environmental, social and economic challenge for Europeans. For some waste evoke negative images: rubbish bags, waste and toxic waste dumps. For others, however, constitute an opportunity; It will Europe manage waste in an ecological way has generated jobs and business opportunities. The management of waste and recycling sectors show a high level of growth and an estimated turnover of more than 100 billion euros in the EU-25. They are labour-intensive sectors which employ a number of people between 1.2 and 1.5 million. The recycling sector provides more and more resources to manufacturing industry: at least 50% of the paper and steel, 43% of the glass and 40% of the non-ferrous metal produced in the EU are today from recycled materials.

In the last 30 years waste have become the Centre of environmental policy, and important progress has been made: highly polluting incinerators and landfills are cleaning up, are developing new techniques for the treatment of hazardous waste, etc. (1)

However, currently implemented collection systems although they have evolved in some years, most still following the same methods as for 30 years. Some advanced systems, have managed to change the location for the containers to places that may be less visible or be less annoying, having thus new storage systems, underground, or containers designed to not clash with the common beauty of the streetsthat can't escape odors or that can't see the garbage they contain. In any case, in some areas of many populations this is expensive and sometimes impossible due to the configuration of the own centres of the cities.

In addition, the organic garbage in any case, should be in any case collected on a daily basis, in particular the organic waste, due to reasons of sanitation and hygiene. For the rest of non organic waste although it has improved aesthetics, still mostly using traditional systems. These residues are not as likely to emit odors or generate dangerous to human health situations, and need not therefore as cyclical as organic waste collection.

These archaic systems of collected of rubbish do that the budget in this field shoot and at present represent a high percentage of the costs of a city council, what does that the taxles by the collected of rubbish have to go up year to year with the consequent disenchantment by part of the citizens. For example, in the case of the city of Seville, have to the company of collected of rubbishes and urban cleaning has some losses that go increasing as they happen the years, whereas the quantity of paper and glass collected is still in increase. We can see these figures in the following table (2):

As it can see in these data, the municipal company of collected of rubbishes is deficitaria, by what not even the rises of taxles achieve paliar this deficit that transforms in costs for the city council. Like east, a lot of examples repeat in other cities of Andalucia and rest of Spain.

For this reason, the company Wellness Telecom knows that, although this deficit can not finish of overnight, with their project e-Garbage "hopefully get the first stones to get kill it or at least reduce it as much as possible". To this end, they want to place particular emphasis on the necessary of the recycling of garbage, not only as a measure to prevent the degradation of the planet but also as a measure to prevent the unit uses of certain products, that returning to use them we can avoid costs, as far as can tell that recycling is an economic measure. Still, the main reason for recycling must be civic-mindedness and awareness of that at the rate of generation of waste environmental problems become more and more serious problems and that, obviously, will affect the quality of life, especially in the urban life.

(1)' A step forward in the sustainable consumption of resources: thematic strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste '. (Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the economic and Social and the Committee of the regions).

(2) Data from the reports on the budgets of the municipal company Lipasam.

Day to day, information technology and communication (ICT) companies are innovating in issues that are very far from the daily routine of a citizen of a foot fails to see this progress in improvements in their daily well-being or their way of life translated into progress. But these technologies continue to contribute to the daily life of people many times without that they will realize; with a subtle aid, whether saving vehicle fuel, improving the quality of the air in the cities or to facilitate the accessibility to various places in the city.

On the other hand society increasingly more is is awareness of the high energy and environmental cost resulting from unnecessary spending on energy. Most are projects and research that try to use, build, and integrate new sources of renewable energy sources, however in the short term the most profitable solutions, which also will continue to serve in the future, will be the saving techniques to avoid the current waste of our resources.

And within the framework of these improvements, where the present project, which has a double objective social and environmental. On the one hand it seeks to improve the quality of life of all persons living in the cities and encountered problems when driving in the presence of trucks of garbage and noise pollution they cause during the night. On the other hand it aims to improve the efficiency of the system of collection, coming only when necessary, and through optimized routes to avoid the waste of time and fuel. To reach this goal and in order to achieve this improvement, this project is marked very clear objectives to reduce the time that these trucks are in the public roads getting greater efficiency of the time these vehicles operate and thereby reducing pollution that these trucks released to the environment and noise that contribute to the cities. Its objective, therefore, is to design a platform for efficient management of the system of garbage collection to enable the collection of the different parts of the cities need to report and design increasingly efficient and optimal routes linking the collection points and to change dynamically according to the needs of every day, and thereby optimize the use of trucks and resources and the savings involved.

In addition, e-Garbage aims to design an innovative system to improve the benefits of these recycling containers and in turn improve the current forms of this recyclable garbage collection.

In particular, the specific objectives of the project are:

• Analyze and develop a system to detect and generate alarms to the need to waste collection point.
• Analyze and develop a tracking system that allows to show more efficient optimal routes given a series of staging points which in turn are geo-referenced and located at all times.

Integrate both systems into a single platform that allows to move the location of the collection points to a system of energy-efficient and optimized calculation of routes that will be dynamically configured according to the needs of the moment.

The project e-Garbage is part of the improvements undertaken by the public authorities to promote recycling within the cities. These measures seek to promote sustainable development and a reduction of the pollution which is currently released to the atmosphere. This project needs the participation citizen so that you get what is marked in the long term and this will remain permeable to all possible suggestions of end users, to make the project closer and easier to use and assimilated by the citizens.

These measures will it be achieved, on the one hand, raise awareness among citizens in need of recycling, and on the other hand, these same people may see as public administration is concerned with the collection of such waste and to continue the work done by the citizens themselves. This achieved a State of well-being in the citizen who looks like his work does not fall on deaf ears and get help to the environment and the city.

This situation is the ultimate goal of the project e-Garbage that advocates for the well-being of the citizen and the efficiency in recycling and waste collection based this on the systems more innovative in the field of information and communication technologies.

The project is essentially in two technologies on the one hand sensors and connecting them to the detection of the filling of containers, and on the other hand the system of management of routes.

Sensors and WSN:

When it comes to WSN mean wireless networks of sensors (Wireless Sensor Network), and refers on a level more specific to the form of interconnection of sensors each other. This is a technology under development, and although in principle it was created for military use for your deployment on battlefields have been niche applications functional within cities or in the nature. As expected, these sensors must be equipped with an antenna to send signals and a small battery that energy to this antenna. This technology is under development and although they have already begun to install some devices with these protocols still cannot be said that a standard final version there is. From Wellness Telecom know that research is vital to the competitiveness of enterprises so that their r & d Department is increasingly important for the company. And within this Department, pays a great attention to such networks showing how a line of research of vital importance for the development of the company. Within the framework of this strategic decision of the company is part of this research project, which will provide an innovative solution for this problem previously commented.

The technology of sensors such as physical device, has also been highly developed while this technology if one could say that it has reached relative maturity, although still continues developing getting more efficient and with a diminishing size sensors. Research in this case lies in first study the parameters to be measured, using sensors to determine these parameters, the positioning of the same for robust and reliable way to determine the filling of containers according to the specific requirements of each one of them (form)(, volume, etc.), the interconnection between the same sensors, and the development of the rules that finally Act on the system.

Location systems and GPS:

There are some commercial solutions that are already developed and marketed based on technology. In fact it is a widespread technology and that many people on foot can enjoy devices based on this technology for the location on everything from cars and for the calculation of routes. Despite this development from Wellness proposed the challenge of implementing an innovative system adapted to the system of garbage collection, and their particular needs, enabling us to implement some features more than devices that are currently on the marketto calculate routes in real time based on the information that may be collected by the network of emergency. In addition our system may monitor all garbage cans in such a way that can know its current location next to the location of the trucks of garbage collection. The acronym GPS coming from systems of Global Positioning (Global Positioning System), and works with level satellite signals to determine the position of an object with a precision of centimetres. The European Union is currently working on its own system for positioning satellite through the Galileo project, so it will also investigate the compatibility of the system with it.

As already mentioned above, the system will connect all the garbage cans to recycling in a city, and on the other hand connect also to lorries responsible for collecting them. With this system, the window of possibility to perform new innovative applications is huge in the new concept that is emerging throughout Europe of 'Smart Cities' (intelligent cities). e-Garbage proposed with this platform of connection connect to the trucks of the garbage collection system of emergencies in the city to make this collection more efficient.

The sensor system with which the containers are equipped control the degree of burden they have to know whether they should be picked up or it is appropriate to postpone its collection to achieve more efficient routes in addition to his position.

These two main features will be implemented in an innovative software platform of their own design which will make it possible to interconnect all previously connected sensors to develop novel systems using wireless sensor networks. Through research in existing systems and in the State of the art of these technologies, the project seeks to develop new communication protocols between these sensors to carry out a more efficient and reliable communication.

With all these steps will be the development of a platform, which in addition to saving on expenditure related to garbage collection and the treatment of these recyclable wastes achieve a decrease in harmful emissions to the environment and therefore a better environment for lifewith a welfare for citizens which will be in greater degree will benefit from all of the improvements provided by this project.

The two modules which form the platform are:

1. Detection of filling and location of container module. For containers with recyclable waste such as paper, cardboard, packaging or glass, the mode of collection is cyclic so that when the truck for collection comes to empty these containers, it is mechanicallywithin a period of time (and sometimes scarce) and always following a same previously established route.

To make this more efficient situation begins to include advanced systems in trash bins which contain this recyclable garbage, in a way that you can know how much is its content, to be able to decide in which cases you uncheck themin which cases it cannot be expected or in which cases it should collect, even though it was not planned. With these changes we will work in an innovative way, in the welfare of its citizens and comfort for everyday life. This module will be formed by the network of wireless sensors that collect filling and location of the same data to know at all times the amount of its content and location of the same. These data are entered through Artificial Intelligence technologies that will generate a series of alarms to have identified the most critical within a system of geographic information points.

2. Module of routes efficient. Non-organic garbage trucks would be another of fronts where trying to act. In doing so it gives these cars with new technologies to try to get a more friendly garbage collection with the environment and its inhabitants. Currently, these trucks are governed by archaic methods of collection by cranes and stacking of materials to pick up. e-Garbage proposes equipping trucks with the latest technologies to make the best routes from the point of view of efficiency and to compact the garbage so that it can reduce the volume of these trucks that often cause problems both movement and logistics as these collection trucks tend to be too large for some small streets of cities or the historical centres of the ancient cities. To this end, this module will allow the calculation of optimal routes according to the intermediate points of mandatory stops that must include a path. Efficient routes will be calculated on the basis of certain parameters to be considered in the project as a shorter route, number of trucks for the collection and areas, possible impacts on the streets, etc. To achieve this, this system will be connected with local emergency systems to be able to add to the criteria of decision possible streets that are blocked or impeding the operation of emergency vehicles. All these data are also entered by means of artificial intelligence technologies to restore the most efficient route in every possible scenario.

Both modules will be integrated into a single common platform that allows to optimize routes based on the necessary points of collection.

Example of the improvements that can be made on tours of the garbage pickers:

Through this innovative solution objectives are achieved by reducing noise and environmental pollution that these big Junk cars emitted to the environment of the city, already if it is quite polluted, both by sounds harmful gases to human health. Therefore through this innovative development may be overall non organic waste collection system control, managing each container individually to through that information management more efficient and therefore more clean and ecological routes.

This system can be easily extensible to other features of the city as ambulances or fire system. These vehicles can be adapted with systems of position and thus achieve a global system of emergencies that can calculate the best routes and thus to improve the efficiency of these systems of emergency, and by consequent to enhance the security of the citizens living in citiesreducing the time of arrival, of, for example, the ambulances to areas where there is injured or the time of performance of fire engines.

For these cities, and because of the importance of these emergency services, the garbage collection system is an excellent way to start to adapt to new technologies, and to the new location systems, taking advantage of its features and especially taking advantage of its features for the well-being of citizens and of the efficiency of these services.