Successful planning of a solid waste management system depends critically o
n the prediction accuracy of solid waste generation. But the prediction con
dition of generation trend in many developing countries is quite different
from those in developed countries. The lack of sampling and analysis in man
y developing countries due to insufficient budget and unavailable managemen
t task force has resulted in a situation where the historical record of sol
id waste generation and composition can never be completed in the long term
. To effectively handle these problems with only limited samples and fulfil
the prediction analysis of solid waste generation with reasonable accuracy
, a special analytical technique must be developed and applied before the s
ubsequent system planning for urban solid waste management is carried out.
This study presents a new theory - grey fuzzy dynamic modeling - for the pr
ediction of solid waste generation in the urban area based on a set of limi
ted samples. The practical implementation has been accessed by a case study
in the city of Tainan in Taiwan. It shows that such a new forecasting tech
nique may achieve better prediction accuracy than those of the conventional
grey dynamic model, least-squares regression method, and the fuzzy goal re
gression technique. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.