Design and Validation of an IOT Enabled Trash Bin Level Monitoring System for Smart Cities

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm plays a vital role in improving smart city applications by tracking and managing city processes in real time. One of the most significant issues associated with smart city applications is solid waste management, which has a negative impact on our society s health and the environment. Annually, the world produces 2.01 billion tons of urban solid waste, with at least 33% not be- ing handled in an environmentally friendly way. By 2050, global waste is estimated to reach 3.40 billion tons, more than doubling population growth over that period. The necessary measures are not taken immediately to control the aforementioned pattern of increment in waste generation, it will lead to various health and environmental issues. Although waste management services exist since the inception of modern cities, the industry s current operating standards are inefficient and resource-intensive. This inef- ficiency is largely due to outdated manual collection methods and logistical processes that lack efficient data-driven solutions. The traditional waste management process be- gins with waste created by city residents and disposed of in garbage bins at the source. Municipal department trucks collect garbage and move it to recycling centers on a fixed schedule. Municipalities and waste management companies fail to keep up with outdoor containers, making it impossible to determine when to clean them or when they are full.. Therefore, there is a need for a data-driven approach to overcome the aforementioned concerns associated with solid waste collection. This thesis introduced the framework and methodology for developing a hybrid IoT enabled trash bin level monitoring system (IoT-TBLMS) for handling solid waste from residential and public areas of smart cities. Two IoT node prototypes namely public bin level monitoring unit (PBLMU) and home bin level monitoring unit (HBLMU) are designed and fabricated for monitoring the fill level of solid waste in trash bins. PBLMUs are deployed using a LoRaWAN net