  Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) is a research and
development organization that aims to increase access to cost-effective
household sanitation services in urban communities in Haiti. Each week, SOIL
provides over 1,000 households with ecological sanitation toilets, then
transports the waste to be transformed into rich compost. However, SOIL faces
several challenges regarding the route optimization of their mixed fleet
vehicle routing. This paper builds upon the authors' submission to Bloomberg's
2019 Data for Good Exchange (D4GX), presenting preliminary findings from a
joint collaboration between DataKind, a data science nonprofit, and SOIL. This
research showcases how optimization algorithms and open source tools (i.e.,
OpenStreetMap and Google OR-Tools) can help improve and reduce the costs of
mixed-fleet routing problems, particularly in the context of developing
countries. As a result of this work, SOIL is able to make improvement to their
collection routes, which account for different road conditions and vehicle
types. These improvements reduce operational costs and fuel use, which are
essential to the service's expansion in the coming years.

Computers and Society