Twenty-five years of hub location research

Abstract

Last year was the 25th anniversary of two seminal transportation hub location publications, which appeared in 1986 in Transportation Science and Geographical Analysis. Though there are related hub location and network design articles that predate these works, the 1986 publications provided a key impetus for the growth of hub location as a distinct research area. This paper is not intended as a comprehensive review of hub location literature; rather, our goal is to reflect on the origins of hub location research, especially in transportation, and provide some commentary on the present status of the field. We provide insight into early motivations for analyzing hub location problems and describe linkages to problems in location analysis and network design. We also highlight some of the most recent research, discuss some shortcomings of hub location research and suggest promising directions for future effort. © 2012 INFORMS.