Economic Impact Assessment of AI-Based Waste Management in Smart Cities: A Case Study
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Abstract
Waste management in smart cities concerns not only the environment and operational efficiency but also fiscal sustainability and the quality of public governance. This study focuses on the core area of a large city and uses two years of operational data from 480 smart bins and 120 sanitation vehicles to build an experimental-control group comparison framework. A net present value (NPV) model and a maintenance cost reduction rate (MCR) were employed for comprehensive evaluation. The results show that AI-based optimization of waste collection reduced vehicle mileage by 18.7%, fuel consumption by 16.4%, and collection delays by 22.1%, while cutting about 1,450 tons of CO₂ equivalent emissions per year. In waste classification tasks, deep learning and transfer learning models reached an average recognition accuracy of 92.3%-94.1%, which was much higher than the 81.5% achieved by traditional machine learning methods. Economic analysis indicates that the system generated an NPV of 3.5 million USD within five years, with maintenance costs reduced by 21.6%, labor hours decreased by 24.3%, and vehicle utilization increased by 19.8%. These results confirm the multidimensional value of AI in waste management. They provide not only clear operational and environmental benefits but also quantitative evidence for improved returns on public investment and governance effectiveness, offering important references for smart city development and policy decisions.
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