UC Santa Barbara

Selecting a good location for an activity or service is fundamentally important. Many different approaches across a range of disciplines have been proposed, developed, and explored to address such strategic decision-making. With better understanding and insight, as well as better geo-spatial data, a number of computational and mathematical advances have been made in recent years. Perhaps the most prominent strategic location problem is attributed to Weber, seeking a site in continuous space that minimizes the sum of weighted distances to multiple destinations. However, increasingly important is accounting for additional concerns, with spatial coverage being particularly critical. This thesis introduces a bi-objective strategic location problem. A mathematical model formulation is derived, and an optimal solution approach is developed. Application findings are reported for several application case studies.