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Aggregation Decomposition and Aggregation Guidelines for a Class of Minimax and Covering Location Models
Author(s) -
Francis Richard L.,
Lowe Timothy J.,
Tamir Arte,
EmirFarinas Hulya
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
geographical analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.773
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1538-4632
pISSN - 0016-7363
DOI - 10.1111/j.1538-4632.2004.tb01140.x
Subject(s) - minimax , computer science , class (philosophy) , decomposition , mathematical optimization , process (computing) , point (geometry) , mathematics , artificial intelligence , biology , ecology , geometry , operating system
Facility location problems often involve movement between facilities to be located and customers/demand points, with distances between the two being important. For problems with many customers, demand point aggregation may be needed to obtain a computationally tractable model. Aggregation causes error, which should be kept small. We consider a class of minimax location models for which the aggregation may be viewed as a second‐order location problem, and use error bounds as aggregation error measures. We provide easily computed approximate “square root” formulas to assist in the aggregation process. The formulas establish that the law of diminishing returns applies when doing aggregation. Our approach can also facilitate aggregation decomposition for location problems involving multiple “separate” communities.