Optimum Facility Location by Accessibility Maximizing

A mathematical-programming approach to facility location is developed. The objective function assumed for optimization is an accessibility measure. It is shown that, by suitably defining this measure, one can get solutions closely related to, if not identical with, the ones given in many current formulations of the location problem. This is believed to be an interesting result in itself, as it shows how the programming approach can unify different strands of research in this field. Moreover the mathematical-programming tools allow a deep analysis of the properties of the solution points, which can be difficult with other methods. Also the interpretation of facility location as an optimization problem not only gives theoretical support to some well-known location algorithms but also shows how to generalize and improve them.