Page 327 - Solid Waste Analysis and Minimization a Systems Approach

19

MODEL VALIDATION AND CASE

STUDY APPLICATION

This chapter discusses the validation and provides a demonstration of the integrated
environmental model. Two case studies are discussed that demonstrate the application
of the performance parameters. The process used to conduct the validation and demon-
stration of the model is listed below:

1 Collect additional data from existing sources to validate model outputs (a discus-
sion of the additional data collected from the U.S. government and university solid
waste programs is provided).
2 Apply the developed regression model using the additional data for several waste
groups and conduct hypothesis tests of the regression coefficients at the 95 percent
confidence level to validate the developed model regression coefficients.
3 Predict the annual solid waste generation of a business using the developed model
and compare the results to actual data to demonstrate the developed model.
4 Conduct two case studies that establish performance parameters for annual waste
generation and discuss findings (one company in control and one out of control).

19.1 Additional Data Collection

from Other Existing Sources

A total of 1173 additional solid waste records of U.S. businesses and government agen-
cies were gathered from existing sources other than the research survey data. The waste
records are defined as annual solid waste tonnage and compositions as well as the inde-
pendent variables required for the environmental model. These sources were not collected
from the national survey used for this research, but from waste management offices
around the United States. The data sources were U.S. government (14 sources) and uni-
versities’solid waste assessment programs (6 sources). An overview of the additional data

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