A Tale of Four Cities: Improving Bus and Waste Collection Schedules in Practical Smart City Applications

Abstract

Computer-based Improvements of waste collection and public transport procedures are often a part of smart city initiatives. When we envision an ideal bus network, it will primarily connect the most crowded bus stops. Similarly, an ideal waste collection vehicle will arrive at every container exactly at the time when it is fully loaded. Beyond doubt, this will reduce traffic and support environmentally friendly intentions like waste separation, as it will make more containers manageable. A difficulty of putting that vision into practice is that vehicles cannot always be where they are needed. Knowing the best time for arriving at a position is not insufficient for finding the optimal route. Therefore, we compare four different approaches to optimized routing: Regensburg, Christchurch, Malaysia, and Bangalore. Our analysis shows that the best schedules result from adapting field-tested routes frequently based on sensor measurements and route optimizing computations.