GIS-Based Assessment of Potential Biomedical Waste Hotspots and Environmental Health Risk During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Gwalior

Indrani Mukherjee; Aabha Varshney

GIS-Based Assessment of Potential Biomedical Waste Hotspots and Environmental Health Risk During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Gwalior

Author(s)	Ms. Indrani Mukherjee, Dr. Aabha Varshney
Country	India
Abstract	The COVID-19 pandemic placed unprecedented pressure on healthcare systems worldwide, and it also, in a major way, increased the generation of biomedical waste. During the whole outbreak period, the widespread use of personal protective equipment (PPE), plus diagnostic materials, vaccination supplies, and a bunch of other disposable medical products, led to a notable jump in infectious and hazardous healthcare waste (Bagwan, 2023; Lestari et al., 2025). So, managing biomedical waste effectively turned into a key public health issue, because if disposal is done in the wrong way, or if transportation, treatment, or final removal is not managed properly, it could help spread disease, and also worsen environmental conditions. In developing countries, this problem becomes even more complicated, since health care infrastructure and waste treatment facilities are often under strain already, and the sudden increase in biomedical waste production revealed major difficulties in maintaining safe and sustainable waste management routines (Bagwan, 2023). Biomedical waste can pose real risks to environmental and human health through several ways of exposure, and it can happen indirectly, too. If disposal practices are not done the right way, air, water, and soil resources can get contaminated, while healthcare workers, waste handlers, and even people living nearby may come into contact with infectious materials and other hazardous pollutants (Joyosemito et al., 2025; Widjaja, 2026a). These worries became more noticeable during the COVID-19 pandemic, mostly because the amount of waste generated was unprecedented, and disposal had to be done quickly. So, knowing the spatial distribution of biomedical waste, along with figuring out where waste generation is more concentrated, is very important for lowering environmental health risks and also for backing up management interventions that actually work. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide a useful platform for looking at and showing spatial patterns tied to environmental as well as public health concerns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, GIS was used a lot for disease surveillance, risk mapping, healthcare organizing, and also resource distribution (Ahasan et al., 2022; Samany et al., 2022). When we talk about spatial analytical approaches like Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation, and Getis–Ord Gi* hotspot analysis, these have shown they work well for finding geographic clusters, and for checking how spatial variability changes in the level of risk (Rahman et al., 2021; Soni et al., 2023). If we combine those methods with biomedical waste data, it can help point toward “hot” or high-risk locations, and in turn support more data-driven environmental management, which is the whole idea.
Published In	Volume 17, Issue 3, July-September 2026
Published On	2026-07-11

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GIS-Based Assessment of Potential Biomedical Waste Hotspots and Environmental Health Risk During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Gwalior

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