The City of Canterbury Bankston in Australia recently received $2 million in funding under Australia’s Smart Cities and Suburbs Program to work on a project called Closing the Loop on Waste. Under the project, the city will investigate how it can deliver superior waste management customer service to residents using technology.
These City’s waste management team face several challenges in their quest to manage city waste effectively and efficiently. Other city officials may also relate to the following challenges:
Manual Process: The process of picking up and inspecting waste bins is very manual with little automation, which makes it quite time-consuming.
Real-Time Issues: The process is not well equipped to deal with real-time operations. For example, if an urgent job comes in, it requires phone calls to find someone who can handle it. There is also not a very good view of where all the trucks are in real-time throughout the day.
Data Accuracy: The city knows how many properties they service, but not exactly how many bins are picked up. Bins are also inspected manually, which can result in data errors.
Communication with the Community: The system currently doesn’t allow for proactive communication with citizens to let them know what is happening; instead, they react to citizen requests after they come in, which have to come in by phone call because online/mobile reporting is not set up.
The overall focus of the project is to improve waste management by using things like GPS for trucks, cameras, sensors, and artificial intelligence. Thinking big picture, the Waste Management Team for the City is also looking into how the data they gather in this project can improve other aspects of the City. Although the project is about waste management and sustainability, the main goal is always to improve the overall operations and quality of life in the city. Specific results that Closing the Loop on Waste will hope to achieve include the following:
Use advanced analytics to detect bin contamination, identify when waste bins have been missed, and investigate illegal dumping
Upgrade residents’ access to information regarding bin collections days and other programmed services
Use GPS data and live traffic information, to minimize potential delays on collection routes
Enable residents to request services or report incidents, via a real-time and customized format, that takes into account the diversity of the local community
Provide residents with notifications, when jobs they’ve requested are completed
Enable residents and organisations to upload images of dumped rubbish, which can be assessed before removal
Smart Cities group
