Prediction of C&D, Grit, Asphalt and Treated Biomedical Wastes During COVID-19 Using Grey Model

ABSTRACT

Waste management has been recognized as a real issue in the current situation due to the COVID-19 impact on people’s lifestyles. Therefore, serious actions need to be taken to control and manage this impact on the environment. One of these important environmental programs is the investigation and research of generated wastes during the pandemic. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the types and amounts of waste generation have changed, therefore a way forward to reduce this impact is to investigate the data that coming from landfill to devise an appropriate approach. The goal of this study is to predict the amount of construction and demolition (C&D), Grit, Asphalt waste, and Treated Biomedical waste (TBW) before, during, and after pandemic using grey systems theory. The grey model is a relatively new forecasting method that has been employed for prediction in a small amount of data and is also used for uncertain systems. In this study, the data coming from Regina landfill is used to predict the amount of wastes generated during the pandemic using the grey model. The results will be compared with the existing regression-based waste model. Different measures like mean absolute percent error (MAPE) and root mean square error (RMSE) will be used to compare and evaluate the performance of these models. Finally, the best forecasting model will be chosen to predict the amount of waste generation for the future generation. © 2023, Canadian Society for Civil Engineering.