Locational Models for Solid Waste Management

A systems analysis approach is, therefore, often used in sorting out the alternatives available to the decision maker. If he is involved in the largely intuitive process of deciding where one or more disposal sites should be located, the decision maker can be helped by modeling structure that provides a vehicle wherein different alternatives can be examined in an orderly way and compared with regard to scope, overlap, and compatibility. After the modeling structure has been developed, the mode must be solved, usually by the use of an algorithm. The methods for modeling and solving locational problems evaluated in this paper are locational equilibrium, trial and error, linear programming, and fixed charge. The fixed charge model is recommended because it can handle the fixed charge (acquisition cost) factor efficiently; other approaches either explicitly or implicitly ignore this important factor.