Background
Cities are complicated systems that consist of numerous interconnected citizens, businesses, various transportation modes, services, and utilities. Scientists expect around 70% of the population to be located in cities and surrounding areas by 2050. Hence, the demand for smart cities which would provide everyone with high-quality services and ensure a suitable environment for economic and social well-being has appeared. Smart cities are mostly driven by the Internet of Things (IoT). A major part of costs that city municipalities face come from data collection. IoT applications in smart cities are argued to have a significant positive impact on efficiency and cost saving.
Garbage is a direct source of spreading diseases in underdeveloped countries and it contributes to the overall estimation of how clean an environment is. Since garbage collection process has to be repeated continuously, some countries simply cannot afford it which leads to some portion of garbage not being picked up. Studies have shown that garbage directly influences life expectancy which makes it a very important issue to be considered by governments all over the world. That is where the question arises of how to get a good implementation of waste collection system at a price that government can afford. The aim of my project is to create an affordable waste monitoring system that takes advantage of IoT, historic data, and various routing techniques.
Software and Hardware
The final product of my project is a waste monitoring system that consists of Arduino board mounted directly in the garbage bin along with ultrasonic sensor and RF transmitter, Arduino board acting as a control center with RF receiver, and software that connects all of the specified components. An ultrasonic sensor is capable of detecting the distance to objects it points to. Therefore, it can be used to measure garbage can fill level. Arduino board within a trash bin will continuously receive this information and send it using RF transmitter directly to the control center at every specified period for further analysis. The control center will receive this data using RF receiver. Later on, the software will analyze received information and make adjustments to routing plans for near future if a given value falls within a warning or critical zone. Such a system will create routing and scheduling policies that reflect a real-time data collected at physical locations of garbage bins.
I acknowledge that testing a full-scale monitoring system will be impossible with an amount of time and hardware components available to me. Therefore, after coming up with a prototype of the monitoring system, I will run simulations based on available data from Dr. Charles Peck of waste collection services within Richmond, IN. This approach will let me evaluate the effectiveness of a proposed system without necessarily setting up a complete system and complete a result section of my paper.
Paper
This paper will provide good background information about IoT and it’s applications in smart city. The primary focus of the paper will be to evaluate the effectiveness of the created waste monitoring system, various routing policies etc. Additionally, this paper will suggest optimal techniques that minimize the garbage spread based on the available resources.
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