The impacts of municipal solid waste collection and transport technologies in smart cities: trends and challenges

The concept of smart city (SC) is an extensive approach to the functioning of urban centres and among the most important issues associated with SC's applications is urban waste management, which negatively impacts society's environment and health if not properly managed. This article proposes to identify the worldwide trends in solid waste collection and transportation in SC and the main challenges in future research. Hence, a review was performed using Methodi InOrdinatio and bibliometrix R-tool, applied to two merged databases, to review a selected portfolio and contribute to direct future research. Results show that environmental and economic dimensions appeared more frequently in the articles (94.3%) and that social analysis is scarce when dealing with waste management, since only 10% of articles addressed social aspects. The social contexts of sustainable development are important factors to be considered due to the many informal and associated waste pickers working with waste collection and separation in low and middle-income countries.