Abstract
Developing successful municipal waste management planning strategies is crucial for implementing sustainable development. The research proposed the application of an optimized artificial neural network (ANN) to forecast quantities of waste in Poland. The neural network coupled with particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is compared to the conventional neural network using five assessment metrics. The metrics are coefficient of efficiency (CE), Pearson correlation coefficient (R), Willmott's index of agreement (WI), root mean squared error (RMSE), and mean bias error (MBE). Selected explanatory factors are incorporated in the developed models to reflect the influence of economic, demographic, and social aspects on the rate of waste generation. These factors are population, employment to population ratio, revenue per capita, number of entities by type of business activity, and number of entities enlisted in REGON per 10,000 population. According to the findings, the ANN-PSO model (CE = 0.92, R = 0.96, WI = 0.98, RMSE = 11,342.74, and MBE = 6548.55) significantly outperforms the traditional ANN model (CE = 0.11, R = 0.68, WI = 0.78, RMSE = 38,571.68, and MBE = 30,652.04). The significant level of the reported outputs is evaluated using the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney U-test, with a significance level of 0.05. The p-values of the pairings (ANN, observed) and (ANN, ANN-PSO) are all less than 0.05, suggesting that the models are statistically different. On the other hand, the P-value of (ANN-PSO, observed) is more than 0.05, suggesting that the difference between the models is statistically insignificant. Therefore, the proposed ANN-PSO model proves its efficiency at estimating municipal solid waste quantities and may be regarded as a cost-efficient method of developing integrated waste management systems.