Modelling Congestion At Refuse Reception Installations

Abstract

The planning of waste reception arrangements must take into account the risk of congestion in the deposition areas because the cost of queueing must be balanced against the cost of increasing the size of the installation. Ways of modelling the performance and forecasting congestion are reviewed including the use of computer simulation as an alternative to queueing theory. Data from existing sites are compared with known probability distributions. A computer program is introduced which seeks to assist designers by taking into account various arrival and service time patterns and which permits the effect of interruptions to the process to be included. A worked example is used to illustrate the methods described.