Title: k-most suitable locations problem: greedy search approach

Authors: Seyed-Hadi Mirghaderi; Behnam Hassanizadeh

Addresses: Department of Management, School of Economics, Management and Social Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran ' Department of Management, School of Economics, Management and Social Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract: Facility location problems have been highly considered in the literature and employed in various real-world situations. The k-most suitable locations (k-MSL) problem is a type of site-selection problem, a direction of facility location problems. It can be applied in several areas like disaster management, urban development, telecommunication and franchising corporations. This paper aims to develop heuristics for the problem. It proposes four greedy search algorithms to find solutions for the k-MSL problem and provide a baseline for comparing future solutions. The proposed greedy algorithms solve the problem for all values of k. The computational experiments using real-world datasets reveal that one of the developed algorithms is superior in consuming CPU time, and the other three algorithms provide accurate solutions in low k and good solutions in all values of k in a reasonable time.

Keywords: location science; k-most suitable locations; k-MSL; heuristics; facility location; greedy search.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2022.126019

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2022 Vol.42 No.1, pp.80 - 95

Received: 09 Jul 2020
Accepted: 31 Dec 2020
Published online: 07 Oct 2022 *

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