Improvement of Solid Waste Management System in Port Harcourt City using Reliability Tool

This research adopts the use of first order reliability method (FORM) in managing a waste management system. Questionnaires were distributed to waste management contractors, individuals, residents, schools, corporate bodies, and institutions, companies and industries. Within the questionnaires retrieved, waste generation data of selected zones were added. Vehicles with different capacities  in kilogram were selected and the right combination for different vehicles was done based on the factors present, which includes; the expected achievable fixed costs, operations costs, and types of vehicle available. Due to the multiple trial and error method, MATLAB and PYTHON statistical and programming software were used to run mathematical expressions of FORM to output a graph that shows the relationship between operation cost, vehicle capacity and number of the vehicles used. Furthermore, the masses of the waste generated were grouped into three (3); Case 1 (minimum waste generated), Case 2 (mean waste generated) and Case 3 (maximum waste generated) of different capacities – 32011kg/day, 80835kg/day and 122338kg/day respectively. Their summary waste management system capacities were 40000kg, 82000kg and 132000kg respectively. After the application of FORM expressions, Case 1 had a reliability of 74%, Case 2 had 75%, while Case 3 had 77%. The results showed that a system with more vehicles tend to have less reliability. In addition, the results showed that the inter-relationship of these several factors could also affect the reliability of a Solid Waste Management System (SWMS).