Smart Waste Collection
This industrial PhD project, carried out from 2021 to 2025 in collaboration with AcegasApsAmga, investigated models and algorithms for the intelligent management of waste collection using electric-vehicle fleets.
The research addresses operational constraints that are often absent from standard routing models: periodic collection plans, intermediate disposal facilities, heterogeneous services, electric-vehicle range, and nonlinear battery charging. The resulting methods combine mathematical optimization and local-search metaheuristics to improve operational efficiency and reduce environmental impact.
Open research resources
The project produced reusable instances and experimental tools for two related problem families:
- Periodic waste collection routing with intermediate facilities
- Electric vehicle routing with nonlinear charging
The work formed the basis of Francesco Taverna’s PhD thesis, Optimization Models and Algorithms for Sustainable Waste Collection, defended in 2025.
Francesco Taverna
PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Francesco Taverna holds a PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Udine.
Luca Di Gaspero
Associate Professor of Information Technology · Director of IOLab
Director of IOLab. He develops intelligent optimization methods and decision-support systems, from metaheuristics and hybrid algorithms to large language models.