Modified goal programming approach for solving multi-objective environmental management problem

Although goal programming is one of the most used techniques for modeling and solving multi-objective optimization problems due to modeling elegance and mathematical simplicity. However, the existing goal programming methods have some deficiencies in assigning the weights and then finding the solution per the objectives' priority to tackle the incommensurabilty in heterogeneous objectives. Therefore, this article proposes an efficient scalarization technique to solve the multi-objective optimization problem by introducing a modified goal function. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using some closeness measure to the ideal solution for several test problems. A real application of the proposed method is illustrated in finding the best locations to establish municipal solid waste (MSW) management intermediate facilities in Nashik city (India). The model selects the three best locations out of the given eight potential locations to establish facilities by considering environmental and economic objectives. Overall, this study provides a theoretical advancement supported by a real-life MSW management application.