Medical waste collection considering transportation and storage risk

The authors consider a Periodic Load-dependent Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (PLCVRP) encountered by healthcare centers and medical waste collection companies for the design of a weekly inventory routing schedule to transport medical wastes to treatment sites. In addition to minimization of transportation risk, occupational risk related to temporary storage of hazardous wastes at the healthcare centers is considered. The transport risk on each arc is dependent on the weight of hazardous medical waste on the vehicle when it traverses that arc. The authors devise a decomposition based heuristic algorithm to solve this problem. The authors analyze the characteristics of the PLCVRP’s solutions with respect to four different criteria: (i) transport and occupational risk, (ii) transport risk, (iii) occupational risk, and (iv) transportation cost. Solving different versions of PLCVRP reveals that minimizing both transport and occupational risk on the network can aid decision makers to develop a better routing schedule in terms of the imposed risk of hazardous medical waste. Experimental results confirm the efficiency of our heuristic. The authors present a case study to illustrate solution attributes obtained by the solution methodology. The case study is based on medical waste management in Dolj, Romania.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2020.104966
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305054820300836
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/oclc/1793974
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Taslimi, Masoumeh
  • Batta, Rajan
  • 0000-0002-3822-8401
  • Kwon, Changhyun
  • 0000-0002-6324-9925
• Publication Date: 2020-8

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 104966
• Serial:
  • Computers & Operations Research
  • Volume: 120
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0305-0548
  • Serial URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/computers-and-operations-research

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Algorithms; Hazardous wastes; Heuristic methods; Medical services; Occupational safety; Routing
• Identifier Terms: Vehicle Routing Problem
• Geographic Terms: Romania
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01839443
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 23 2022 10:52AM