Decision Support Model for Municipal Solid Waste Management at Department of Defense Installations.

This research focuses on the development of a decision support model to identify the preferred strategy for managing municipal solid waste using the principles of decision analysis theory. The model provides an effective decision making tool to evaluate and compare different municipal solid waste management strategies. The users of this model, the Environmental Manager or decision maker at a given installation, can enter installation-specific waste stream characteristics, treatment and disposal costs, and material buy-back prices to determine the expected value for various alternative strategies. The strategy having the greatest expected value is considered the preferred alternative. In calculating the expected value of a strategy, the economic cost, social cost, and waste diversion from the landfill are evaluated. This research also includes a representative case study to illustrate the use of the decision support model. Although the case study addresses Wright-Patterson AFB, the model can be applied to any Department of Defense Installation.