This study proposes and tests an analytical framework for interpreting digitally monitored municipal biowaste collection services through comparable diagnostics of operational performance, additional effort, and emissions intensity. The framework was applied to 572 collection services recorded between July and December 2025 in the Municipality of Barreiro, Portugal, covering seven circuits operating under different urban morphologies and collection configurations. Service-level operational records were transformed into physically interpretable performance indicators and an additional operational effort index was derived from robust normalization of serviced container density and service time per kilometer. The results showed marked heterogeneity across service regimes, with the highest effort observed in residential circuits characterized by greater spatial and temporal demand, while the non-domestic and communal circuits remained at or below municipal reference conditions. At the municipal scale, operational effort was moderately associated with mass collected per kilometer (ρ = 0.490, n = 572), weakly and non-significantly associated with mass per hour (ρ = 0.075, p = 0.074), and negatively associated with mass per container (ρ = −0.325). For services operating above municipal reference conditions (Eesf > 0, n = 286), emissions intensity was negatively associated with both effort components and with the aggregate effort index, with the strongest association observed for Eesf (ρ = −0.554). The results indicate that higher operational effort tends to coincide with greater spatial mass recovery, but not with higher container-level yield or proportionate improvements in emissions performance. More broadly, the study shows that the analytical value of digital monitoring depends not only on data availability, but also on the ability to convert routine service records into interpretable diagnostics for municipal decision-making.
Maia et al. (Fri,) studied this question.