Modelling Infrastructure Interdependency at the City Scale: A Novel Methodology Applied to Birmingham’s Solid Waste Management System

The amount of solid waste produced by cities is growing. The European Union is tackling this problem with a move towards an integrated approach to solid waste management, aimed at creating economically, environmentally and socially sustainable solutions. The pace at which change can take place will be constrained by the high sunk costs and long life cycles of the existing infrastructure; and, system implementation will require significant investment from the private sector, which will only be forthcoming if project costs can be lowered and investors can be sure they will capture their fair share of the value generated. Models of existing solid waste management systems are helpful in providing a base from which to identify opportunities that leverage infrastructure interdependencies to create schemes with attractive value/cost ratios. This paper describes research into the feasibility of creating such models using a methodology previously developed for, and successfully applied to, the UK’s railway infrastructure system.