A Proposed IoT Based Smart Waste Bin Management System with An Optimized Route: A Case Study of Ghana Michael Christopher Xenya 1 , Emmanuel D’souza 2 , Koffie-Ocloo D. Woelorm 2 Robert Nii Adjei-Laryea 1 , Ekow Baah-Nyarkoh 1 1 Department of Computer Engineering, Ghana Technology University College, Accra, Ghana 2 Department of Information Systems, Ghana Technology University College, Accra, Ghana Email: mxenya@gtuc.edu.gh Abstract -- Waste management in Ghana has in recent times been a subject of discourse that pervades most of its industrial cities. The provision of waste bins at vantage points by waste management institutions is not enough to solve the problem of the current management system. In this paper, a proposed method that uses multiple solutions to address the issues of spillage and inefficient collection scheme is presented. The system provides a monitoring platform for the waste management institution to handle the alert records by creating orders for the garbage collectors/drivers which can be accessed via a mobile application system. The proposed system includes a smart waste bin which has a microcontroller-based system constructed and affixed to the top of the bins to detect bin level status and communicate to drivers and management office via SMS and application system. A work order is created once a utilizes is full which can be received by the drivers and routing system regarding the state of bins distributed within a specific geographic area that can be assessed on the drivers’ phone. The system implantation works successfully, making it possible to monitor waste bin status in real-time but occasionally had high latency which was primarily due to the use of GSM module for GSM/GPRS connectivity. Keywords: IoT, Waste management system, Smart waste bins, Routing system, GSM/GPRS connectivity. I. Introduction Waste management in Ghana has been a persistent issue which, over the decades, has received much attention. Regardless of the provision of waste bins all over the cities, it is a peril that these bins mostly get too full to the point of spillage before the garbage collectors attend to the bins. This problem, however, can be mitigated through an automated system that would issue periodic notifications to appropriate personnel assigned for waste management activities which are evidenced in [1]-[6]. In this work, some schemes are provided to address the existing inefficiencies which include the provision of smart bins, desktop management application, which is fed with data from the smart bins, an SMS notification system and an optimized routing system for garbage collectors. This paper is not to dent the effort being put in place by the government of Ghana to address waste management issues but to propose a new framework that can seamlessly be integrated into the future smart city. The rest of the paper consists of a review of related works and the proposed method which explicitly unfolds the design and implementation of the various subcomponents. The next section presents the test results of the built system, and the final section draws the conclusions and recommendations for future related works. II. Related Works The issue of waste management continues to receive attention globally and works done in this area vary from one context to another [1]–[4]. A system framework comprising of smart bin, gateway and control station was proposed in [1]. By integrating graphical user interface into the proposed system, real-time data on the status of the bins were made accessible. This real-time access to bin status can be used by waste management institutions to manage waste bins efficiently. However, this work focuses on the monitoring of bin status without providing geolocation information of the bins. In [5], proposed smart solid waste bins for both wet and dry garbage stationed at different locations were implemented with monitoring and collection schedule. This system involved four significant phases which are: the hardware, software system in the cloud, mobile application and routing information. All these components are adopted in our system plus desktop management system, SMS on the bin status and geolocation information. IoT-based waste management systems were proposed in [6-7]. For each case, an implemented smart bin that uses a microcontroller with a sensor for the detection of the garbage level and a module for internet connectivity was presented. Both systems had no means of monitoring the garbage collectors on duty, but this would be addressed in our system. The relevance of addressing waste management problems in the smart city keeps receiving attention in recent works[6-9]. These works have a primary goal of proposing a framework for addressing waste management. However, 978-1-7281-3770-4/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE 2020 Conference on Information Communications Technology and Society (ICTAS) 978-1-7281-3770-4/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE 10.1109/ICTAS47918.2020.234005 Authorized licensed use limited to: University of South Africa. Downloaded on May 22,2020 at 09:20:48 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.