Abstract
In location problems we want to determine the best way to serve a set of clients, or communities, whose location and demand are known. This implies to decide the number and location of the facilities, the size or capacity of each facility, and the allocation of the demand points to the open facilities in order to optimize some objective function. The type of optimality criterion depends on the nature of the activities or of the equipment to be installed. Most location models deal with desirable facilities, such as warehouses, service and transportation centers, emergency services, and so forth, which interacts with the customers and where usually travel is involved. The typical criteria for such decisions include minimizing some function of the distances between facilities and/or clients. However, during the last two or three decades, those responsible for the areas overall development, where the new equipment is going to be located (i.e., central government, local authorities) as well as those living there, are showing an increasing interest in preserving the area’s quality of life.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Multi-Criteria Models: Multi-criteria models are models considering explicitly several conflicting dimensions of the problem.
Satisfactory Solution: Satisfactory solution is an efficient (or approximately efficient) solution acceptable by the decision maker.
Decision Support: Decision support consists of establishing, on recognized scientific bases, proposals to be submitted to the judgment of the decision maker.
Semi-Obnoxious Facilities: Semi-obnoxious facilities are useful but unwelcome facilities that produce environmental concerns.
Location Analysis: Location analysis is the study and development of models, techniques, and tools to provide decision makers with good solutions to realistic locational decision problems.
Efficient (Non-Dominated) Solution: Efficient (non-dominated) solution is a feasible alternative not allowing to find another feasible solution improving some criteria without worsening another one.
Interactive Tools: Interactive tools are decision support tools incorporating, successively and alternatively, calculating and dialogue phases till some stopping condition is satisfied.