Measuring Incineration Plants' Performance using Combined Data Envelopment Analysis, Goal Programming and Mixed Integer Linear Programming

Incineration plants produce heat and power from waste, reduce waste disposal to landfills, and discharge harmful emissions and bottom ash. The objective of the incineration plant is to maximize desirable outputs (heat and power) and minimize undesirable outputs (emissions and bottom ash). Therefore, studying the overall impact of incineration plants in a region so as to maximize the benefits and minimize the environmental impact is significant. Majority of prior works focus on plant specific decision making issues including performance analysis. This study proposes a hybrid Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Goal Programming (GP) and Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to assess the performance of incineration plants, in a specific region, to enhance overall power production, consumption of waste and reduction of emissions. This model not only helps the plant operators to evaluate the effectiveness of incineration but also facilitates the policy makers to plan for overall waste management of the region through decision-making on adding and closing plants on the basis of their efficiency. Majority of prior studies on incineration plants emphasize on how to improve their performance on heat and power production and neglect the waste management aspects. Additionally, optimizing benefits and minimizing negative outputs through fixing targets in order to make decision on shutting down the suboptimal plants has not been modeled in prior research. This research combines both the aspects and addresses the overall performance enhancement of incineration plants within a region from both policy makers and plant operators’ perspectives. The proposed combined DEA, GP and MILP model enables to optimize incineration plants performance within a region by deriving efficiency of each plant and identifying plants to close down on the basis of their performance. The proposed model has been applied to a group of 22 incineration plants in the UK using secondary data in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model.

Interactive multicriteria decision support system for spatial planning analysis

This paper builds upon previous work entailing, in a first stage, the development of a geographic information system based environmental modelling approach and, in a second stage, the development of a stand-alone, more generic integrated spatial decision support system. The latter system was designed to address general spatial decision problems in a way that enables interactive definition of mathematical models, the spatial entities involved and their attributes. This manuscript focuses primarily on a further development to implement a multicriteria modelling framework supporting sophisticated evaluation and comparison of hypothetical alternative scenarios in the context of spatial decision problems. Typically several conflicting and generally incommensurable criteria are involved, which derive from the multidimensional nature of most of the decision problems. In such circumstances, multicriteria techniques are recommended to be used in the analysis process. Overall, at the very beginning, the decision maker is not fully aware of the whole problem in hand and hence an effective learning process needs to be undertaken. Operating interactively with the methods above, either simultaneously or following a given sequence, the decision maker may become effectively acquainted with the whole problem by investigating possible coherences among results obtained and also by analysing sensitivity of variations in input data

Interactive multicriteria decision support system for spatial planning analysis

This paper builds upon previous work entailing, in a first stage, the development of a geographic information system based environmental modelling approach and, in a second stage, the development of a stand-alone, more generic integrated spatial decision support system. The latter system was designed to address general spatial decision problems in a way that enables interactive definition of mathematical models, the spatial entities involved and their attributes. This manuscript focuses primarily on a further development to implement a multicriteria modelling framework supporting sophisticated evaluation and comparison of hypothetical alternative scenarios in the context of spatial decision problems. Typically several conflicting and generally incommensurable criteria are involved, which derive from the multidimensional nature of most of the decision problems. In such circumstances, multicriteria techniques are recommended to be used in the analysis process. Overall, at the very beginning, the decision maker is not fully aware of the whole problem in hand and hence an effective learning process needs to be undertaken. Operating interactively with the methods above, either simultaneously or following a given sequence, the decision maker may become effectively acquainted with the whole problem by investigating possible coherences among results obtained and also by analysing sensitivity of variations in input data

Spatial multicriteria GIS-based analysis to anaerobic biogas plant location for dairy waste and wastewater treatment and energy recovery (Barcelos, NW Portugal)

Intensification, concentration and specialization of dairy cow farms originate many activity by-products, such as wastewater and slurry which implies treatment costs, reduce environmental quality and promote social conflicts between the urban and rural population. These (by)products present a high potential for energy recovery from biogas produced in anaerobic digestion processes, thus contributing to sustainable development. This study is focused on the development of a GIS-based spatial support decision system that supports Multicriteria Analysis and Weighted Hierarchical Analysis (AHP) models aiming to identify site locations with appropriate conditions for the implementation of biogas production units, using waste and wastewater produced by the dairy cow farms in Barcelos municipality (NW Portugal). This spatially explicit model considers environmental, social and economic factors, as well as, legal location constraints tested with a consistent sensitivity analysis of the modelling processes and results. The results indicate sites with appropriate conditions for the location of biogas production units, considering the minimal distance to the dairy cow farms, electric and road networks, in higher areas with forest land cover and maximizing the distance from the urban spaces, as well as, from the river/ground water surfaces and agricultural/ecological reserves. In the next studies it´s relevant to explore biogas units dimensioning concerns, explore other complementary biomass sources in anaerobic (co)digestion solutions and expand collected spatial data to spatial decision support system during future biogas units operation phase.(undefined)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio