Applications of Location Analysis

This book, companion to Foundations of Location Analysis (Springer, 2011), highlights some of the applications of location analysis within the spheres of businesses, those that deal with public services and applications that deal with law enforcement and first responders. While the Foundations book reviewed the theory and first contributions, this book describes how different location techniques have been used to solve real problems. Since many real problems comprise multiple objectives, in this book there is more presence of tools from multicriteria decision making and multiple-objective optimization.

The section on business applications looks at such problems as locating bank branches, the potential location of a logistics park, sustainable forest management and layout problems in a hospital, a much more difficult type of problem than mere location problems.

The section on public services presents chapters on the design of habitats for wildlife, control of forest fires, the location of intelligent sensors along highways for timely emergency response, locating breast cancer screening centers, an economic analysis for the locations of post offices and school location.

The final section of the book includes chapters on the well-known problem of locating fire stations, a model for the location of sensors for travel time information, the problem of police districting, locations of jails, location of Coast Guard vessels and finally, a survey of military applications of location analysis throughout different periods of recent history.

H.A. Eiselt is a Professor in the Faculty of Business Administration of the University of New Brunswick. He received his Diploma in Business Management from the University of Gottingen in 1975 and his doctorate degree in Operations Research from the same University in 1978. His teaching and research interests are in the fields of location, multicriteria decision making and optimization, with specialization in competitive location models, the location of landfills, location models with multiple objectives and spatial representations of discrete decision problems. His research has appeared in journals such as: Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Transportation Science, Networks, the Journal of Regional Science, Location Science, Computers & Operations Research, the European Journal of Operational Research, INFOR, the Annals of Operations Research, the Journal of the Operational Research Society, Environment and Planning, Computers & Industrial Engineering, International Transactions in Operational Research and many others. In addition, he has published seven books on different aspects of operations research.

Vladimir Marianov is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. He earned a M.S.E. and a Ph.D. degrees from The Johns Hopkins University in 1987 and 1989, respectively, as well as an Electrical Engineering degree from Universidad de Chile in 1978. His teaching and research interests are in the area of location, modeling, with applications in communications networks, nature reserve selection, location of public services, location under congestion and location of competitive facilities. His research has appeared in such journals as: Computers and Operational Research, Annals of Operational Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Papers in Regional Science, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, IIE Transactions, Journal of Regional Science,