【摘要】Location modelling is employed in urban and regional planning to site facilities thatprovide services of some sort. Issues to be considered usually include the number of facilities tolocate, where to site those facilities and how demand is to be served. Given the geographicnature of location problems, a key issue is how to represent facilities and demand in geographicspace. Traditionally, spatial abstraction as discrete demand is assumed as it simplifies modelformulation and reduces computational complexity. However, errors in derived solutions arelikely not negligible, especially when demand varies continuously across a region. This paperdiscusses a single facility location problem that considers demand to be continuously distributedand allows a facility to be located anywhere in space, the continuous Weber problem. Anapproach for dealing with continuous demand is proposed that is integrated through geographi-cal information system (GIS) functionality. Empirical results highlight the advantages of thedeveloped approach and the importance of solution integration with GIS.

【关键词】Weber problem;optimization;GIS;facility location

【文献来源】Jing Yao;Alan T. MurrayPapers in Regional Studies.2014（3）