RAPID: The Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on Municipal Solid Waste Management Systems

Engineering - The coronavirus pandemic is challenging municipal solid waste management systems (MSWMSs). In an effort to prevent its spread, most people are working from home, which means that they are generating a larger amount of residential waste than normal. Further, the capacity of MSWMSs is being constrained by the increasing number of unavailable workers due to self-quarantining and the isolation of local areas as a result of travel bans. With a pandemic, the function and interplay of different system components (i.e., waste collection companies, waste transfer stations, local government agencies, material recovery facilities, and landfills) must become more adaptive to maximize the limited capacity, which is key to accommodating excessive waste demand. In this RAPID project, the project team will collect ephemeral data on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on MSWMSs in multiple U.S. states including Florida, New York, and California. Since the impact of the coronavirus on MSWMSs and their responses vary across states and from urban to rural setting, these data can be used to (i) identify and characterize a broad range of regional waste management challenges, (ii) track the emerging adaptive behaviors different system entities take to adequately operate municipal waste services, and (iii) specify the system requirements and characteristics (i.e., system composition, topology, and control) that enable successful adaptation during a pandemic. This project will yield a database of pandemic impacts and responses and associated attributes and variables in MSWMSs that will guide researchers, private sectors, regulators, and planning agencies toward the creation and implementation of resilient waste management operations for pandemics.

The primary project tasks are threefold. First, the team will identify and map entities, operations, relationships, and controls in each system through virtual meetings with waste management companies and solid waste management authorities, and review of waste management guidelines. This step will establish a baseline structure for the normal operation, which will help to distinguish entities' emerging behaviors during the pandemic. Second, an online survey will ask system entities about their waste-related challenges and responses; the survey will occur once per month over a six-month period. If normal operations require adaptation of system structure, an interview will be held to gain more insight into the collective decision-making context. Third, a virtual workshop with a technical advisory group will be organized at the end of this project to review MSWMSs' reported adaptive measures and discuss recommendations.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.