The purpose of this book is to provide readers with an introduction to the fields of decision making, location analysis, and project and machine scheduling. The combination of these topics is not an accident: decision analysis can be used to investigate decision seenarios in general, location analysis is one of the prime examples of decision making on the strategic Ievel, project scheduling is typically concemed with decision making on the tactical Ievel, and machine scheduling deals with decision making on the operational Ievel. Some of the chapters were originally contributed by different authors, and we have made every attempt to unify the notation, style, and, most importantly, the Ievel of the exposition. Similar to our book on Integer Programming and Network Models (Eiselt and Sandblom, 2000), the emphasis of this volume is on models rather than solution methods. This is particularly important in a book that purports to promote the science of decision making. As such, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as weil as practitioners, will find this volume beneficial. While different authors prefer different degrees of mathematical sophistication, we have made every possible attempt to unify the approaches, provide clear explanations, and make this volume accessible to as many readers as possible.

Employing state-of-the art quantitative models and case studies, Location Theory and Decision Analysis provides the methodologies behind the siting of such facilities as transportation terminals, warehouses, housing, landfills, state parks and industrial plants. Through its extensive methodological review, the book serves as a primer for more advanced texts on spatial analysis, including the monograph on Location, Transport and Land-Use by the same author. Given the rapid changes over the last decade, the Second Edition includes new analytic contributions as well as software survey of analytics and spatial information technology. While the First Edition served the professional community well, the Second Edition has substantially expanded its emphasis for classroom use of the volume. Extensive pedagogic materials have been added, going from the fundamental principles to open-ended exercises, including solutions to selected problems. The text is of value to engineering and business programs that offer courses in Decision and Risk Analysis, Muticriteria Decision-Making, and Facility Location and Layout. It should also be of interest to public policy programs that use geographic Information Systems and satellite imagery to support their analyses.

Location analysis has matured from an area of theoretical inquiry that was designed to explain observed phenomena to a vibrant field which can be and has been used to locate items as diverse as landfills, fast food outlets, gas stations, as well as politicians and products in issue and feature spaces. Modern location science is dealt with by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners in geography, economics, operations research, industrial engineering, and computer science. Given the tremendous advances location science has seen from its humble beginnings, it is time to look back. The contributions in this volume were written by eminent experts in the field, each surveying the original contributions that created the field, and then providing an up-to-date review of the latest contributions. Specific areas that are covered in this volume include: • The three main fields of inquiry: minisum and minimax problems and covering models • Nonstandard location models, including those with competitive components, models that locate undesirable facilities, models with probabilistic features, and problems that allow interactions between facilities • Descriptions and detailed examinations of exact techniques including the famed Weiszfeld method, and heuristic methods ranging from Lagrangean techniques to Greedy algorithms • A look at the spheres of influence that the facilities generate and that attract customers to them, a topic crucial in planning retail facilities • The theory of central places, which, other than in mathematical games, where location science was born

This book, companion to Foundations of Location Analysis (Springer, 2011), highlights some of the applications of location analysis within the spheres of businesses, those that deal with public services and applications that deal with law enforcement and first responders. While the Foundations book reviewed the theory and first contributions, this book describes how different location techniques have been used to solve real problems. Since many real problems comprise multiple objectives, in this book there is more presence of tools from multicriteria decision making and multiple-objective optimization. The section on business applications looks at such problems as locating bank branches, the potential location of a logistics park, sustainable forest management and layout problems in a hospital, a much more difficult type of problem than mere location problems. The section on public services presents chapters on the design of habitats for wildlife, control of forest fires, the location of intelligent sensors along highways for timely emergency response, locating breast cancer screening centers, an economic analysis for the locations of post offices and school location. The final section of the book includes chapters on the well-known problem of locating fire stations, a model for the location of sensors for travel time information, the problem of police districting, locations of jails, location of Coast Guard vessels and finally, a survey of military applications of location analysis throughout different periods of recent history.

This book is a volume in honor of Zvi Drezner’s 75th birthday. Professor Drezner is a leading scholar in location science. He received his BSc degree in Mathematics in 1965 and his PhD. in Computer Science ten years later, both from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Since 1978 he has published in excess of 300 papers in refereed journals and books. He has received many honors, among them the University Outstanding Professor in 2005-6, the Outstanding Research Award (both from Cal State-Fullerton), the Location Analysis Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Location Analysis, and was named a Lifetime Fellow in INFORMS.Zvi has worked in a variety of fields, but most prominently in continuous location models. His main contributions include a 1982 paper on competitive location analysis, which was the first contribution to formally use the von Stackelberg “leader-follower” concept in the plane, contributions in 1989 (along with many others) on the Weber problem, and work with Oded Berman on the p-median under uncertainty in 2008. He has also enriched the literature by many contributions that devise genetic algorithms and tabu search techniques (both heuristic algorithms), as well as global optimization techniques, such as the “big-triangle-small-triangle” method, applied to location problems.The chapters of the book have been chosen to provide readers with a large variety of topics in the field of location science, which normally are available only in many different specialist journals. In addition to easily approachable surveys, the contributions, written by the top specialists in the field, present the latest results as well.

This book applies Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) tools and techniques to problems in location analysis. It begins with a generic model for MCDM and subsequently develops specific versions of the technique for particular location problems. Throughout the book, MCDM is understood to encompass all tools and techniques that choose or rank existing or feasible solutions, including discrete multi-attribute decision making (MADM) problems, which typically include an attribute table that specifies the consequences of each decision with regard to the given criteria, as well as multi-objective linear problems (MOLPs), which incorporate all objectives in a single optimization problem. The book is organized as follows: the first four chapters introduce readers to the basic tools and techniques used in single-objective optimization, multicriteria decision making, location analysis, and other tools, such as statistical regression and geographical information systems. This is followed by ten chapters on model applications, each of which introduces readers to a specific location problem and applies one technique to solve it. The book is then wrapped up in a closing chapter that looks at the location process from a practitioner’s point of view. This book is intended as a textbook for upper-undergraduate and master-level courses on location analysis. It will also benefit decision-makers who actually need to locate facilities.

This book is intended to present the state of the art in research on machine learning and big data analytics. The accepted chapters covered many themes including artificial intelligence and data mining applications, machine learning and applications, deep learning technology for big data analytics, and modeling, simulation, and security with big data. It is a valuable resource for researchers in the area of big data analytics and its applications.