CCEE’s Dr. James Levis featured on WRAL for work on online solid waste-systems management tool

CCEE Research Assistant Professor Dr. James Levis was featured on news broadcast station WRAL for his development of SwolfPly — Solid Waste Optimization Life-Cycle Framework in Python — a free online tool developed at NC State with “models designed to better manage solid waste systems and environmental goals in the most cost effective way possible.”

As the population continues to grow, it becomes increasingly more difficult to manage solid waste infrastructure and reduce carbon emissions. Thus the growing need for tools such as SwolfPly, which allows users to assess trade-offs and benefits of solid waste management practices. Levis says other researchers can add data so it “actually becomes a better tool and grows as more work is done with it.”

Levis, who developed SwolfPly with the help of CCEE Ph.D. student Mojtaba Sardarmehni, told WRAL the ultimate goal is to minimize health and environmental risks associated with the collection, treatment, recycling and disposal of municipal solid waste.

You can learn more about SwolfPy here.

Levis, who is a member of CCEE’s Environmental, Water Resources, and Coastal Engineering and Computing and Systems faculty groups within Civil Engineering, has interests in the area of environmental systems analysis and decision support. His teaching and research focus on solid waste management, sustainable resource management, life-cycle modeling, and systems optimization.