Location Science

This comprehensive and clearly structured book presents essential information on modern Location Science. The book is divided into three parts: basic concepts, advanced concepts and applications. Written by the most respected specialists in the field and thoroughly reviewed by the editors, it first lays out the fundamental problems in Location Science and provides the reader with basic background information on location theory. Part II covers advanced models and concepts, broadening and expanding on the content presented in Part I. It provides the reader with important tools to help them understand and solve real-world location problems. Part III is dedicated to linking Location Science with other areas like GIS, telecommunications, healthcare, rapid transit networks, districting problems and disaster events, presenting a wide range of applications. This part enables the reader to understand the role of facility location in such areas, as well as to learn how to handle realistic location problems. The book is intended for researchers working on theory and applications involving location problems and models. It is also suitable as a textbook for graduate courses on facility location.

Practitioners in process industry have to increasingly adapt their global production networks to changes in the competitive environment. A majority of the supply network design models proposed by academia do not sufficiently capture the questions that have to be resolved. This book provides the necessary operations research decision support tools. It builds on an example of the specialty chemicals industry.

Location analysis has matured from an area of theoretical inquiry that was designed to explain observed phenomena to a vibrant field which can be and has been used to locate items as diverse as landfills, fast food outlets, gas stations, as well as politicians and products in issue and feature spaces. Modern location science is dealt with by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners in geography, economics, operations research, industrial engineering, and computer science. Given the tremendous advances location science has seen from its humble beginnings, it is time to look back. The contributions in this volume were written by eminent experts in the field, each surveying the original contributions that created the field, and then providing an up-to-date review of the latest contributions. Specific areas that are covered in this volume include: • The three main fields of inquiry: minisum and minimax problems and covering models • Nonstandard location models, including those with competitive components, models that locate undesirable facilities, models with probabilistic features, and problems that allow interactions between facilities • Descriptions and detailed examinations of exact techniques including the famed Weiszfeld method, and heuristic methods ranging from Lagrangean techniques to Greedy algorithms • A look at the spheres of influence that the facilities generate and that attract customers to them, a topic crucial in planning retail facilities • The theory of central places, which, other than in mathematical games, where location science was born

Over the past thirty-five years, a tremendous body of both theoretical and empirical research has been established on the `science of transportation'. The Handbook of Transportation Science has collected and synthesized this research into a systematic treatment of this field covering its fundamental concepts, methods, and principles. The purpose of this handbook is to define transportation as a scientific discipline that transcends transportation technology and methods. Whether by car, truck, airplane - or by a mode of transportation that has not yet been conceived - transportation obeys fundamental properties. The science of transportation defines these properties, and demonstrates how our knowledge of one mode of transportation can be used to explain the behavior of another. Transportation scientists are motivated by the desire to explain spatial interactions that result in movement of people or objects from place to place. Its methodologies draw from physics, operations research, probability and control theory. It is fundamentally a quantitative discipline, relying on mathematical models and optimization algorithms to explain the phenomena of transportation. The fourteen chapters in the handbook are written by the leading researchers in transportation science in an effort to define and categorize for the first time the scientific nature and state of the art of the field. As such, it is directed to the broader research community, transportation practitioners, and future transportation scientists.

Praise for the First Edition This book is refreshing to read since it takes an important topic... and presents it in a clear and concise manner by using examples that include visual presentations of the problem, solution methods, and results along with an explanation of the mathematical and procedural steps required to model the problem and work through to a solution.” —Journal of Classification Thoroughly updated and revised, Network and Discrete Location: Models, Algorithms, and Applications, Second Edition remains the go-to guide on facility location modeling. The book offers a unique introduction to methodological tools for solving location models and provides insight into when each approach is useful and what information can be obtained. The Second Edition focuses on real-world extensions of the basic models used in locating facilities, including production and distribution systems, location-inventory models, and defender-interdictor problems. A unique taxonomy of location problems and models is also presented. Featuring examples using the author’s own software—SITATION, MOD-DIST, and MENU-OKF—as well as Microsoft Office® Excel®, the book provides: • A theoretical and applied perspective on location models and algorithms • An intuitive presentation of the uses and limits of modeling techniques • An introduction to integrated location-inventory modeling and defender-interdictor models for the design of reliable facility location systems • A full range of exercises to equip readers with an understanding of the basic facility location model types Network and Discrete Location: Models, Algorithms, and Applications, Second Edition is an essential resource for practitioners in applied and discrete mathematics, operations research, industrial engineering, and quantitative geography. The book is also a useful textbook for upper-level undergraduate, graduate, and MBA courses.

This book provides a thoughtful and rigorous guide to coverage modeling, reviewing essential models, solution approaches, and related applications. Since the early developments of the Location Set Covering Problem and the Maximal Covering Location Problem, models based upon some form of coverage have been extended and applied in a number of areas, helping to improve services offered to citizens of large cities and regions. Examples include trauma care services, transit systems design, cell tower location, and many others. The book not only describes the strengths and weaknesses of currently available models, but also presents details on major developments, including solution procedures and applications, making it well suited both as a reference text and a textbook for graduate level courses.

1. Theme and focus Few books are available to integrate the models for facilities siting, transportation, and land-use. Employing state-of-the-art quantitative-models and case-studies, this book would guide the siting of such facilities as transportation terminals, warehouses, nuclear power plants, military bases, landfills, emergency shelters, state parks, and industrial plants. The book also shows the use of statistical tools for forecasting and analyzing implications of land-use decisions. The idea is that la- use on a map is necessarily a consequence of individual, and often conflicting, siting decisions over time. Since facilities often develop to form a community, these decisions are interrelated spatially—i. e. , they need to be accessible to one another via the transportation system. It is our thesis that a common methodological procedure exists to analyze all these spatial-temporal constructs. While there are several monographs and texts on subjects related to this book's, this volume is unique in that it integrates existing practical and theoretical works on facility-location, transportation, and land-use. Instead of dealing with individual facility-location, transportation, or the resulting land-use pattern individually, it provides the underlying principles that are behind these types of models. Particularly of interest is the emphasis on counter-intuitive decisions that often escape our minds unless deliberate steps of analysis are taken. Oriented toward the fundamental principles of infrastructure management, the book transcends the traditional engineering and planning disciplines, where the main concerns are often exclusively either physical design, fiscal, socioeconomic or political considerations.

The book covers both theory and applications of locational analysis (LocAn). The reader will see the power of LocAn models in various real-world contexts, varying from communication design to robotics and mail delivery. It is divided into two parts. The first part contains an overview of some of the LocAn methodologies. The second part describes in thorough detail some selected applications. The text provides researchers with an excellent and well thought-out review of available location models.