Decision Support Models for Solid Waste Management - An Overview

The purpose of this paper is to analyze some models currently used in the area of solid waste management, identified in literature as decision support models and developed for establishing a decision support system (DSS).They are usually designed to help decision makers to build up integrated programs for applying solid waste management alternatives such as recycling, treatment, incineration, disposal.These decision support models are based on cost benefit analysis, multicriteria analysis or life cycle assessment (LCA) respectively.The structure, types, advantages and limitation of these models were analyzed, the work being focused on the methodology of LCA in waste management.Types of LCA models and application in the solid waste management area and possible combinations of LCA with other methods used in literature such as cost-benefit analysis and multicriteria decision making are approached, discussed and compared.