Advanced radial approach to resource location problems

Abstract

This paper deals with the optimal resource location problems used for emergency service system designing. Due to limited budget or other technological restrictions, particular mathematical models usually take the form of the weighted p-median problem, in which the numbers of served users and possible service center locations, from which the associated service is provided, take the value of several hundreds or thousands. A standard objective in such formulation assumes minimization of total disutility, like social costs. The social costs are often proportional to the distance travelled by all system users to the nearest located source of provided service. As the access of population to the service is performed by transportation means operating on the underlying transportation network, the design of suitable deployment of the service centers belongs to hard combinatorial problems. This contribution deals with an approximate approach based on radial formulation with homogenous system of radii. Presented approach enables to solve large instances in admissible time making use of a universal IP-solver. Special attention is paid to possible adjustment of the approximate approach to the exact method based on useful features of the radial formulation.