Monthly and Seasonal Modeling of Municipal Waste
Generation using Radial Basis Function Neural
Network
Maryam Abbasi, a Mohammad Naim Rastgoo,b and Bahareh Nakisab
a
Faculty of Civil, Water and Environmental Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran; mary_abbasi@sbu.ac.ir (for
correspondence)
b
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Queensland, Australia
Published online 00 Month 2018 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ep.13033
Accurate modeling of municipal solid waste (MSW) genera-
tion is vital as a reliable support for decision-making processes
ensuring the success of the future development and manage-
ment of wastes. The present study aims to forecast monthly and
seasonal MSW generation using radial basis function (RBF)
neural network and assess the effect of the gender of educated
people with a combination of meteorological, socioeconomic,
and demographic variables on waste generation. The study
was implemented on data obtained from a megacity for the
period of 1991–2013. Cross validation technique was employed
to evaluate modeling performance. Performance of the RBF
model were also compared with adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference
system (ANFIS) and artificial neural network (ANN) models.
The results proved that the number of educated women was
highly associated with MSW generation while the number of
educated men was not a significant factor. Modeling outputs
demonstrated that the RBF neural network model could suc-
cessfully predict both monthly and seasonal variations of MSW
generation. Compared to ANFIS and ANN, RBF was the best-
performing model for monthly and seasonal forecasting of
MSW generation. The results suggested that soft computing
methods like RBF improve the estimate of MSW generation in
metropolises. Hence, RBF network can be applied for forecast-
ing and modeling MSW generation on a national scale. © 2018
American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2018
Keywords: radial basis function network, municipal solid
waste generation, machine learning, gender of educated
people
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the huge amount of waste is created, and con-
sequently, a successful waste management is needed to ensure
resource efficiency and the sustainable growth of the econ-
omy. The estimation of the amount of waste is essential for
designing and implementation of a waste management plan as
it is the foundation of an effective waste planning [1].
Municipal solid waste (MSW) generation changes by geo-
graphical location and depends on various parameters such as
cultural practices, income level, the time of the year, the cli-
mate, the degree of development, the standard of living, and
the eating habits [2–4]. Therefore, forecasting waste generation
© 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers
Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1002/ep
is a challenging issue. A lot of studies have been conducted on
waste generation modeling from traditional to advanced
modeling techniques. So far, waste generation models are clas-
sified as correlation analysis, time-series analysis, group com-
parison, multiple regression analysis, system dynamics
modeling, and input–output analysis [5–7]. Correlation analysis
was used to find the relationship between MSW generation
and income level [8]. It was found that waste generation was
highly correlated with income level. Whereas, higher average
generation rates around 2.1 kg per capita per day occurring in
high-income nations in comparison to lower income, upper
middle and lower middle with MSW generation rate of 0.6, 1.2,
and 0.8 kg per capita per day, respectively. However, accu-
rate waste generation prediction cannot be achieved using
correlation analysis or percapita waste generation [9]. Disre-
garding demographic and socioeconomic factors, Rimaityte
et al. [10] used conventional time-series approaches including
autoregressive and integrated moving average (ARIMA) and
seasonal autoregressive and integrated moving average (sAR-
IMA) to predict generation. The time series model perfumed
poorly for long-term prediction of MSW generation. The
model, by contrast, was good at short-term forecasting of
MSW generation. Moreover, Xu et al. [11] employed time
series analysis with the mixed of gray system theory and sAR-
IMA model, a methodology to reveal the dynamic relation-
ships in a system using differential equations that are derived
from control theory in which the term gray describes the
understanding of information in the system. The hybrid
model had a superior performance with lower errors than the
conventional sARIMA model. A comparative study was con-
ducted to forecast MSW quantity and quality by applying dif-
ferent approaches including time series analysis, and multiple
regression in Waste Prognostic Tool for the case study of the
Iasi Romania [12]. The urban life expectancy, population age,
total MSW, and a number of residents were used as predictors
in prognostic models so that solid waste amount was pre-
dicted. Using time series analysis resulted in the most accu-
rate model to forecast MSW generation. In another study by
Oribe-Garcia et al. [13], tourism activity, urban morphology,
income, and education level were found as the most effective
drivers of MSW generation. In this study, the effect of gender
and age structure on municipal waste generation was investi-
gated. The data from a 10-yr period, from 2001 to 2010 year,
were taken into consideration. Other MSW drivers such as
1
the gender of the population, female to male ratio, the gender
of working force, the gender of the unemployed population
were assessed, and women’s unemployment and the ratio of
men and women had a strong connection with per capita per
year MSW generation rate. In other words, male to female
ratio was found as the more effective factor rather than the
gender of the population [4]. Using the regression analysis, a
model describing the dependence between female to male
ratio, number of unemployed women and waste quantity was
determined. The multiple regression built by these factors
was capable of explaining about 70% of the variation in
MSW generation. Daskalopoulos et al. [14] used regression
analysis to link gross domestic product (GDP) and related
total consumer expenditure as strong correlating factors in
waste generation at the country level. They concluded that
use of a linear equation would only give an indication of the
general trend of MSW generation, while not attempting to
approximate its real measured values. It may be due to the
theoretical requirement of regression analysis such as inde-
cency of input variables, constant variance and normality of
errors.
In recent decades, advanced approaches including machine
learning methods were used for environmental modeling as
well as MSW generation forecasting [15,16]. In the history of
MSW generation prediction, neural networks have always
been used and different studies show an acceptable and reli-
able performance for these techniques. Noori et al. [17] used
artificial neural networks (ANN) model to forecast weekly
MSW generation in Tehran city, Iran. Coefficient of determina-
tion (R2) and average absolute relative error of ANN model
were obtained 0.78 and 4.4%, respectively. However, ANN
showed a reasonable performance for weekly prediction of
waste generation; other studies were conducted to improve
the accuracy of short-term modeling of waste generation.
Abbasi et al. [6,18] assessed the application of support vector
machine (SVM) and its hybrid with partial least square (PLS)
for prediction of weekly MSW generation in Mashhad and Teh-
ran cities. They achieved higher accuracy (R2 = 0.87) than
ANN model to forecast weekly waste generation. In daily
scale, the combination of simulated annealing and ANN
model, and PLS and SVM model was employed to enhance the
performance of machine learning methods [19]. The MSW gen-
eration data were collected from American city of Seattle. The
hybrid of SA-ANN was proved to produce more accurate fore-
cast than PLS-SVM, ANN, and SVM models. MSW generation in
a long-term period was studied by Intharathirat et al. [20] using
the optimized multivariate gray model. The multiple factor
analysis was implemented regarding factors affecting waste
collected from residential and commercial sectors. The results
revealed that gray model with convolution integral (1, 5) could
forecast waste generation with the lowest error of 1.16% mean
absolute percentage error. To find the best architectures of
ANN model for modeling annual waste generation, different
architectures of ANN model including general regression neu-
ral network (GRNN) and back propagation neural network
(BPNN) were trained by the waste data of European countries
[21,22]. The consumption among the population with an age
of 15 yr, domestic material consumption, resource productiv-
ity, gross product, carbon dioxide emissions, population den-
sity, average household size, industry household final
consumption, expenditure were used as inputs and MSW
generation as a target in the modeling process. The models
were trained and tested based on the data of 26 countries
from the Eurostat database and the GRNN achieved better
results. The choice of modeling approach and input variables
in waste generation modeling depends on the period of pre-
diction and the time step of waste data due to change in
effective variables on waste generation. Reviewing the litera-
ture shows that most of the studies focus on short- and long-
prediction of waste generation by daily, weekly, and annual
2 Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1002/ep
waste generation data. Although, there are few studies on
monthly and seasonal waste generation modeling except its
importance [23]. Four intelligent system algorithms including
k-nearest neighbors, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system
(ANFIS), SVM, and ANN were compared to seek the best
model for forecasting monthly MSW generation in Logan City,
Australia [7]. Results showed artificial intelligence models
were successful in monthly MSW prediction. Moreover,
results demonstrated that ANFIS system had the highest accu-
racy to capture the peaks while kNN was good at predicting
the averages. Azadi and Karimi-Jashni [24] compared the per-
formance of ANN and regression analysis for prediction of
mean seasonal MSW generation in 20 cities located in Fars
Province, Iran. The results indicated that the ANN model had
a higher predictive accuracy with R2 0.74 than regression
model with R2 0.49.
Among the shallow neural network structures, radial basis
function (RBF) neural network provides a global approxima-
tion property, without a local optimal problem and an excel-
lent forward network. RBF neural networks are robust to the
noisy data and their structures are designed to learn nonlinear
patterns. These properties are caused to use RBF neural net-
work as a reliable machine learning technique for short- and
long-term forecasting in several domains [25]. Since the appli-
cation of RBF neural networks in waste generation modeling
has received no attention so far.
Not only the modeling approach but also the variables
related to waste generation rates, affect the accuracy of
waste generation forecasts. Oribe-Garcia et al. [13] found
tourism activity, urban morphology, income, and education
level as the most effective drivers of MSW generation. In this
study, the effect of gender and age structure on municipal
waste generation was investigated. The data from a 10-yr
period, from 2001 to 2010 year, were taken into consider-
ation. Other MSW drivers such as the gender of the popula-
tion, female to male ratio, the gender of working force, the
gender of the unemployed population were assessed, and
women’s unemployment and the ratio of men and women
had a strong connection with per capita per year MSW gen-
eration rate. In other words, male to female ratio was found
as the more effective factor rather than the gender of the
population [4]. Using the regression analysis, a model
describing the dependence between female to male ratio,
number of unemployed women and waste quantity was
determined. The multiple regression built by these factors
was capable of explaining about 70% of the variation in
MSW generation. A comprehensive review of the significant
factors affecting MSW quantities was done by Intharathirat
et al. [20]. The factors were categorized into two groups
including socio-economic and demographic factors. Socio-
economic factors consist of income, GDP, expenditure, tax,
employment, unemployment, number of overnight stays
per habitant of tourists and business travelers, energy con-
sumption, etc. Demographic factors comprise population,
population density, number of households, urbanization,
household size, age of people, education and attitude,
number of rooms of a habitant, infant mortality rate, life
expectancy at birth, etc. Since the performance of models
is affected by the factors considered for waste generation
prediction, further studies are needed to find the effective
factors on MSW generation to improve the modeling
accuracy.
This study aims to assess the relationship between edu-
cated people and MSW generation and the possibility of RBF
model for longitudinal prediction of MSW generation (monthly
and seasonally). We also compared the performance of RBF
model with ANFIS and ANN models which are extensively
used for MSW generation modeling in previous studies. The
models were built and then tested using the data of Tehran
city for the period from 1992 to 2013. We used 8-fold cross-
validation method to evaluate the performance of models and
avoid over-fitting.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Case Study and Data
Tehran city is the capital city of Iran which is the largest
megacity in Iran with an area of over 700 km2. The city is
located in the foothills of South Central Alborz Mountain lying
between latitude 350 340 –350 500 North and longitude 510 080 –
510 370 East. According to the council division, Tehran city
includes 22 districts. The city climate is generally semi-arid
with the mean temperature of 18 C, the maximum temperature
of 38.7 C, and the minimum temperature 7.4 C. The annual
average of precipitation was measured 245–316 mm.
According to the latest information obtained from the Statis-
tical Center of Iran, the population in this city was about
12,500,000 in 2016. Due to high population, a huge amount of
wastes are collected from Tehran city. A record of around
8000 ton per day was reported by Tehran Waste Management
Organization in 2016. The analysis of the composition and
properties of the mixed waste generated in Tehran city
revealed that the major share of total waste devoted to wet
and organic, biodegradable waste, 70% of total waste. The
Tehran’s council is responsible for waste collection, its proces-
sing, and disposal. The schematic diagram of waste manage-
ment system in Tehran city has been illustrated in Figure 1.
The data adopted in this study include GDP, rain, maxi-
mum temperature, population, household size, educated man,
educated women, income, and the unemployment rate as
input variables and output variable was monthly MSW genera-
tion. The data cover the period from 1991 to 2013. Monthly
MSW generation was obtained from Waste Management Orga-
nization of Tehran Municipality (WMOTM). WMOTM measures
weight of collected waste at landfill site and household waste
data were used in this study. We disregarded waste data dur-
ing 2001 and 2002 due to unreliability as reported by
WMOTM. The meteorological variables were downloaded
from the Iran meteorological organization website (http://
www.irimo.ir/eng). The Statistical Center of Iran provides a
comprehensive history of socioeconomic data used in this
Figure 1. Schematic of municipal waste management system in Tehran city.
Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1002/ep
study. In addition, the seasonal dataset, which is used in this
study, are derived from the monthly dataset data.
Radial Basis Function Model
Nonlinear dynamic systems forecasting and modeling using
supervised learning techniques such as RBF, probabilistic neu-
ral network (PNN), GRNN have been applied on different
domains [15,26–30]. RBF network is introduced by Broomhead
and Lowe [31] who used the RBF as the activation function in
neural network architecture. RBF network is an adaptive and
special type of neural network which was motivated by the
mathematics of approximating arbitrary continuous functions
[31]. There has been growing attention to use RBF in many
fields of science as well as environmental modeling due to its
general approximation, fast learning, and compact topology
[32]. RBF network composed of a three-layer feed forward
propagated network, the input layer, a hidden layer, and the
output layer. Suppose a dataset with m observations X = (x1,
x2, x3,. .., xm) for a network with n number of neurons in the
hidden layer and one target, the dimension of the correspond-
ing structure is m × n × 1. A mapping between output variable
and input variables is established which is commonly chaotic
and nonlinear. RBF neural P network achieves a mapping f:
Rm ! R as f ðx Þ ¼ w0 + ni¼1 wi ϕ ðkx − oi kÞ where w0 denotes
the bias width between hidden and output layer, considered
as zero in this study, o represents the center vector of the ith
node in the hidden layer, wi is associated weights from the ith
node of the hidden layer to output layer. RBF, ϕ, is a
Gaussian-based function which is used as an activation func-
tion in the hidden layer. This function is defined as below:
 
2
ð− jx − oi j
−
ϕðx Þ ¼ e 2σ 2
ð1Þ
where σ value is the spread of the function. In this study, σ
was 100, and the optimum number of neurons in the hidden
layer was obtained by trial and error with the range of 1–10
(Figure 2).
The maximum training cycle is set l = 200, the learning rate
of weight, center and width parameter is η1 = η2 = η3 = 0.001,
and the pre-set minimum error accuracy is 0. Figure 2 shows
the schematic structure of RBF model used in this study.
3
 Unemployment rate

Max temperature

Educated women

Input layer
Household size
Educated men

Population
Income

GDP
Rain

Number of neurons
Hidden layer
φ1 φ2 O2
… … φn

(n)
O1 On

w2
w1

Output layer
wn
∑

Output:
MSW generation
Figure 2. Structure of RBF network used in this study.

All statistical analyses were carried out using MATLAB to generate the output values of the neural network. The
R2013a software. advantage of using ANN is that this network is able to learn
from the examples, as the learnt information is stored across
the network weights.
Artificial Neural Network
ANN is a computational model which recognize different ADAPTIVE NEURO-FUZZY INFERENCE SYSTEM
pattern which are buried in the data. ANN consists of simple The architecture of ANFIS uses both neural network and
processing unit, called neurons. Each neuron in the network is fuzzy logic which makes it powerful discriminator. This algo-
connected to the other neurons by unidirectional connections rithm works with data and extract fuzzy rules like if-then rules
of different weight. The neurons are arranged in a series of from the data. To train ANFIS algorithm, learning algorithms of
layers, namely, input layer, variable number of hidden layers, neural networks are used.
and output layers. It should be noted that the number of hid- ANFIS model consists of five layers for generating inference
den layers depends on the complexity of the problem to be system. There are several nodes in each layer and there is a
solved. First in the input layer, the input values are assigned to connection between each layer (see Figure 3).
input neurons and send the activation value to each neurons It should be noted that the square nodes, called adaptive
in the next layer. Then in the next layer, hidden layer, each nodes, are accepted to represent the parameter sets in these
neuron sums the received activation values from its connected nodes which are adjustable. Circle nodes are fixed nodes that
neurons and then using a transfer function determines its out- are accepted to represent the fixed parameter sets in the sys-
put value. This process is done in the next layer, output layer, tem. First-order Sugeno-type model which is proposed by Jang
[cite] is as follows:

Rule 1 : if ðx is A1 Þ, ðy is B1 Þ, thenðf1 ¼ p1 x + q1 y + r1 ð2Þ

Rule 1 : if ðx is A2 Þ, ðy is B2 Þ, thenðf2 ¼ p2 x + q2 y + r2 ð3Þ

where x, y are the inputs, Ai and Bi are the fuzzy sets, fi the
outputs within the fuzzy region identified by the rules, and pi,
qi, and ri the parameters which are determined during the
training.

Association between MSW Generation and Explanatory

Variables
Figure 3. Architecture of a typical ANFIS. According to the main role of human to generate domestic
solid waste, demographic data are suggested by several studies

4 Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1002/ep

as the key indicators related to MSW [22,33]. Population, house   1 XN
hold size as well as the number of educated women and edu- v xi , xj ¼ C
g, h¼1 ighC igh
ð5Þ
N
cated men were selected as demographic indicators. Since
socioeconomic data have been associated with MSW genera- and
tion by previous researches, GDP, unemployment rate, and 8  
income were chosen as socioeconomic indicators. The correla- >
> v xi , xj  
tion between MSW and meteorological condition has also   < qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 ffi , v ðxi Þv xj > 0
been addressed in some studies [33,34]. Maximum temperature R xi ,xj ¼ vðxi Þv xj ð6Þ
>
>  
and rain were also considered as meteorological indicators. :0 , vðxi Þv xj ¼ 0
Linear and nonlinear correlation tests were used in this study
to explore the effective variables related to the output variable
where the distance covariance of a feature vector xi, with
(MSW generation). Distance correlation [35] measures the non-
itself, is defined as
linear dependence between the input variables with MSW gen-
eration. On the other hand, Pearson correlation measures the
1 XN
linear dependence between the input variables with MSW gen- v ðxi Þ ¼ C2
g, h¼1 igh
ð7Þ
eration. The variables which were strongly correlated with N2
waste generation were chosen for modeling. In the case of
and Cigh is the Minkowski distance matrix, of norm r, is com-
variables with weak, biased, or moderate correlation with
puted for each feature vector xi using
waste generation, we built the model with the different mix of
the selected effective factors and less correlated variable to see  
how these variables could improve the modeling perfor- Cigh ¼ xig − xjh r ’ , g,h ¼ 1, …,N ð8Þ
mances. The variables could increase the accuracy of predic-
tion were included in the final model. Distance correlation and And for each feature we have
Pearson’s correlation techniques are explained in the following
sections. Cigh ¼ Cgh −cg: −ch: + c:: , g,h ¼ 1, …, N ð9Þ

Pearson’s Correlation where

Let xi and xj be two variable vectors, for all distributions  
with finite first moments. Pearson’s correlation coefficient 1 XN 1 XN
Cg: ¼ C ,C :h ¼
h¼1 gh
C , C ::
h¼1 gh
(PC) is defined as follow:  N N
1 XN
¼ C
g, h¼1 gh
ð10Þ
Covðxi , xi Þ N2
PC ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
  ð4Þ
Var ðxi ÞVar xj The value of R 2 [0, 1], therefore, if the value of R = 0, then
the two feature vectors are independent, and if R = 1 the fea-
where Cov(xi,xj) designates the covariance of two variables xi tures are completely dependent. The higher value of R shows
and xj and Var designates the variance. more nonlinear correlation between the variables.

Distance Correlation Data Preprocessing

R(xi,xj) is defined as a standardized version of the distance
covariance v(xi,xj). In addition, let a variable vector has
N distances such that xi= xi1, xi2, .. ., xiN. Therefore, the dis-
tance covariance v(xi,xj) and distance correlation R(xi,xj)
between two variables vector xi and xj are calculated as
follow:
To reduce the impact of noise in the data and finally a bet-
ter prediction, the collected data needed to be properly
adjusted and normalized prior to the modeling process.
Numerous methods have been tested to enhance the network
training [36]. We used a normalized function to scale data in
the range of [−1, 1] by Equation 11.

Figure 4. Eightfold cross validation used in this study.

Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1002/ep 5

Figure 5. Correlation analysis of different features with monthly waste estimation during 21 time intervals: (a) non-linear and
(b) linear.

Figure 6. Correlation analysis of different features with seasonal waste estimation during 21 time intervals: (a) non-linear and
(b) linear.


x − xmin
xnormalized ¼ × 2 −1 ð11Þ
xmax −xmin
where Xnormalized indicates the normalized value and xmin and
xmax are the maximum and minimum values of the variable,
respectively.
Model Evaluation
We used eightfold cross validation (CV) technique to evalu-
ate models performance and estimate their out-of-sample
accuracy. Generally, supervised learning algorithms are sus-
ceptible to overfitting problem. This means that, these algo-
rithms potentially may produce models which are too trained
on noises and details of training data and have a low perfor-
mance on new data. Therefore, using CV helps to avoid poten-
tial model overfitting.
In this study, data were randomized first and then divided
into eight equal size subsets. For each fold, the model was
tested on one of the eight subsets and were trained by the
remaining subsets (see Figure 4). This process was repeated
eight times, and the resulting statistics for assessing modeling
performance were summed and then averaged. Using CV
avoids potential model overfitting which is the model that pro-
duces better predictive performance in the data set used in
model fitting than the data from the out of the study area. The
modeling performance metrics used in this study were cross
validated R2 (CV-R2) and cross validated root mean square
error (CV-RMSE).
In addition, the Bland–Altman analysis was employed to
assess the agreement between the observation and predictions
of seasonal and monthly waste generation. More details on the
Bland–Altman analysis is fully described in a study by Giavar-
ina [37].
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Investigation of the Correlation Coefficients between
Explanatory Variables and Dependent Variable
In this study, nine independent variables, which reflect
demographic, socioeconomic, and meteorological conditions,
were used to predict monthly and seasonal solid waste genera-
tion. The nonlinear and linear correlations between these

6 Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1002/ep

Table 1. CV-R2 and CV-RMSE for different model fitting.

S1 S2 S3 S4 S5
All data minus All data minus All data minus educate
All All data minus educate educate man man temp rain
data educated man man temp temp rain unemployment rate
Monthly CV-R2R2 0.736 0.716 0.704 0.709 0.678
CV-RMSE 0.106 0.110 0.112 0.111 0.116
Seasonally CV-R2R2 0.872 0.872 0.875 0.884 0.849
CV-RMSE 0.066 0.066 0.065 0.063 0.071

independent variables and the dependent variable during dif-
ferent time intervals were analyzed, using distance correlation
and Pearson’s correlation, to evaluate the influence of each the
explanatory variables on waste generation. In this regard, for
each of the datasets (monthly and seasonal), nonlinear and lin-
ear correlation between the each of the independent variables
and MSW generation were calculated for the first year (1992).
Then the data related to the next year (1993) were added to
these data (1992) and the correlations between each of the
independent variables and MSW generation was calculated
again. This process was repeated to cover all the data derived
from 21 yr of the study.
For the monthly and seasonal datasets, the changes of lin-
ear and nonlinear correlations between the predictors and
MSW generation during 21 time intervals are depicted in Fig-
ures 5 and 6. At a glance, the correlation between independent
and dependent variables followed the nonlinear patterns
rather than linear ones. As it is expected, the higher correlation
was found in seasonal scale than monthly scale. The main rea-
son is that seasonal patterns of waste generation have a key
role for estimating the amount of waste generation in a city.
Moreover, the variation of the correlations with time revealed
that there were stronger relationships between socioeconomic,
demographic, and meteorological variables and waste genera-
tion in a long period than a short period. In other words,
socioeconomic, demographic, and meteorological variables
influenced the long-term generation of MSW generation.
Although, some factors such as unemployment rate did not fol-
low a specific trend.
Among independent variables, GDP, income, household
size and educated women were highly correlated with both
monthly and seasonal waste generation, respectively. This
confirms previous findings in the literature but introduced the
number of educated female as a waste generation driver. In
contrast, the number of educated men was a less effective fac-
tor on MSW generation. This may be related to the role of
women and their education in waste generation.
Prediction of MSW Generation using RBF Neural
Network
Nine variables from socioeconomic, demographic, and,
meteorological data groups were selected and then fed to an
RBF network to estimate monthly and seasonal MSW genera-
tion during 21 yr. To find the best combination of input vari-
ables, five different subsets of input data were fed to an RBF
network to build an estimation model. Model S1 included all
the nine variables while the number of educated men was
excluded in model S2 due to the weak correlation with the
dependent variable. Model S3 involved all the variables of
model S2 except maximum temperature and rainfall was
excluded in model S4. The model S5 contains GDP, popula-
tion, income, number of educated females, and household
size. These models are built for each of the datasets separately
and validated using CV technique. In addition, CV-R2 and CV-
RMSE as two performance metrics were calculated.
Table 1 summarizes the obtained CV-R2 and CV-RMSE
values for different models. Model S1 was capable of explain-
ing 74% and 87% of monthly and seasonal waste generation
variations. By excluding number of educated male from all of
the variables (the model S2), CV-R2 is decreased by 2.7% and
CV-RMSE rose by 3.8% in the monthly model, but no differ-
ence is observed in the performance of the seasonal model. In
the monthly and seasonal models, by removing educated male
and maximum temperature (model S3), CV-R2 is decreased by
1.7% and 0.3%, compared to model S2, respectively. In model
S4, especially the seasonal model, CV-R2 values significantly
are increased. The observed increase in CV-R2 is certainly due
to removing rainfall variable from the datasets. Among the var-
iables excluded, unemployment rate had the significant effect
on modeling performance. CV-R2 was dropped by around 4%
for both model. Hence, the unemployment rate could slightly
improve the prediction of MSW generation. Finally, the highly
correlated predictors (GDP, population, household size,
income, and the number of unemployment rate) were
included in the model.

Table 2. R2 and RMSE for model fitting in each fold of cross validation.

Seasonal
Fold 1 Fold 2 Fold 3 Fold 4 Fold 5 Fold 6 Fold 7 Fold 8
2
Train and test R 0.870 0.896 0.895 0.876 0.885 0.888 0.894 0.894
RMSE 0.066 0.061 0.059 0.062 0.0603 0.0634 0.0617 0.0584
Test (R) R2 0.857 0.591 0.868 0.929 0.936 0.847 0.612 0.858
RMSE 0.062 0.061 0.069 0.064 0.091 0.057 0.068 0.086
Monthly
Fold 1 Fold 2 Fold 3 Fold 4 Fold 5 Fold 6 Fold 7 Fold 8
Train and test R2 0.735 0.742 0.726 0.754 0.737 0.752 0.736 0.728
RMSE 0.106 0.105 0.105 0.102 0.105 0.104 0.106 0.108
Test (R) R2 0.749 0.721 0.789 0.533 0.714 0.568 0.733 0.815
RMSE 0.107 0.112 0.117 0.135 0.113 0.118 0.102 0.084

Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1002/ep 7

Figure 7. The Bland–Altman plots of predicted and observed values of normalized MSW generation: (a) monthly and
(b) seasonal.

Figure 8. Prediction–observation plot of normalized values of MSW generation: (a) monthly and (b) seasonal.

The CV results for the model trained by the best combina-
tion of data are presented in Table 2. The R2 and MSE were
calculated for each fold of eightfold CV across the model runs.
The small differences in R2 and MSE in both the monthly and
seasonal models showed the RBF model did not suffer from
overfitting problem.
For a closer inspection of modeling results, we used the
Bland–Altman analysis and prediction–observation plot to
evaluate the agreement between the observation and predic-
tions of monthly and seasonal models. In Figure 7, the Bland–
Altman plots demonstrated low bias in both models; however,
the seasonal model had a tighter agreement than a model with
fewer large residuals. We also compared the observed MSW
generation to the predicted values of RBF models. The
predicted–observed plot of seasonal and monthly modeling of
MSW generation indicated that the values were more equally
scattered across the line of agreement at the low and high
waste generation (Figure 8). In addition, the predicted–
observed plot showed stronger correlation between the
seasonal predictions of municipal waste generation and its
actual observations.
COMPARISON OF THE PERFORMANCE OF RBF MODEL WITH ANFIS AND ANN
Same dataset was used to train and test the RBF, ANFIS,
and ANN models. Table 3 compares the performance of RBF,
ANFIS, and ANN models based on CV-R2 and CV-RMSE param-
eters. The CV-R2 values were respectively 0.678, 0.53, and 0.43
for the RBF, SVM, and ANFIS models for monthly prediction
while they were 0.85, 0.62, and 0.56 for seasonal prediction.
All the built models from seasonal dataset have higher CV-R2
and lower CV-RMSE compared with the built models from
monthly dataset. The obtained results from both datasets show
RBF models are more accurate than ANN and ANFIS in pre-
dicting waste generation. Based on Table 3, RBF achieved the
highest CV-R2 and lowest CV-RMSE values among all the
models. In addition, there are significant differences between
the values obtained by the ANN and ANFIS models with the
RBF models that highlight more efficiency of RBF model in the
domain of waste generation prediction.

Table 3. Cross validated R-squared and CV-RMSE for RBF, CONCLUSION

ANFIS, and ANN models. In this study, we assessed the effect of the gender of edu-
cated people on MSW generation and association of factor
Monthly Seasonal influencing MSW generation and waste quantity. We also
developed RBF neural network to model municipal waste gen-
2 2
CV-R CV-RMSE CV-R CV-RMSE eration. Hence, the linear and nonlinear correlation between
RBF 0.68 0.12 0.85 0.07 monthly and seasonal MSW generation and educated men,
ANFIS 0.53 1.98 0.62 0.18 educated women, household size, maximum temperature,
ANN 0.43 2.01 0.56 0.23 rain, GDP, income, population, and the unemployment rate
was obtained using Pearson’s correlation and distance

8 Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1002/ep

correlation, respectively. We found that factors affecting waste
generation were nonlinearly correlated with waste quantity.
Our results confirm the findings of previous studies indicating
GDP, income, and household as the most significant factor
influencing MSW generation. Although we introduced the
number of educated female as a waste generation driver while
educated men had a weak relationship with MSW generation
as disregarding it from inputs did not influence the modeling
performance.
The best subset of data including the most correlated
parameters was used to build the RBF network. RBF model
was able to capture 74% and 87% of variability in monthly and
seasonal MSW generation during 1991–2013 across Tehran
city, Iran.
The RBF model utilized in this work was the first attempt to
apply it for modeling of MSW generation. Using CV technique,
the RBF model was found to have the best performance com-
pared to ANFIS and ANN models, and better agreement with
the observed data. Among the shallow neural network struc-
tures, RBF neural network provides an excellent forward net-
work which is robust to the noisy data and designed to learn
nonlinear patterns. These properties are caused to use RBF
neural network as a reliable machine learning technique for
short- and long-term forecasting in several domains [25].
While it is difficult to comprehensively compare our results
with other studies on waste generation modeling. We found
that our model captured similarly slightly higher amount of
variability in MSW generation. A monthly model for Mashhad
city, Iran explained 70% of variability in MSW generation,
while a preprocessed ANN model explained 73% [33,34]. A
recent seasonal model explained 73% of MSW generation vari-
ability [24]. In summary, the modeling results demonstrated
that the RBF model had a good predictive ability for accurate
predictions of waste generation on the monthly and seasonal
scale.
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