An Approach to the Economic Analysis of Solid Waste Disposal Alternatives
By Hector Malarin, William J. Vaughan (12/97, ENV-119, En) See also Environment and Natural Resources
Hector Malarin and William J. Vaughan, both IDB economists, take look at solid waste project analysis issues in An Approach to the Economic Analysis of Solid Waste Disposal Alternatives. They propose and explain a mixed integer regional optimization approach to choosing the best configuration of disposal site locations and their storage capacities. The method is illustrated using stylized cost and location information adapted from a real case study. The rationale for the exercise is that individual solid waste disposal site investments should not be viewed in isolation from the spatial setting and their cost relationships with other sites in a regional system; ignoring these relationships is likely to raise system operating and capital costs. But, because it is difficult to sort through and prioritize thousands of possible disposal alternatives by inspection or repeated simulation of the total costs of all possible combinations of sites and scales when the region is "large", a least-cost optimization method is recommended which does the sorting automatically once the problem has been properly specified. After reviewing the basics of the heuristic approach to site selection, the optimization model is laid out and solved in the case study context, initially in terms of financial costs. In a subsequent section, a way of incorporating the relative environmental damages of alternative locations into the model is suggested, and the example is re-solved with environmental costs included to show how they can influence the identification of the best set of sites.
Last updated: 05/08/07
