On Optimal Location with Threshold Requirements

The optimal location of services is one of the most important factors that affects service quality in terms of consumer access. On the other hand, services in general need to have a minimum catchment area so as to be efficient. In this paper a model is presented that locates the maximum number of services that can coexist in a given region without having losses, taking into account that they need a minimum catchment area to exist. The objective is to minimize average distance to the population. The formulation presented belongs to the class of discrete P-median-like models. A tabu heuristic method is presented to solve the problem. Finally, the model is applied to the location of pharmacies in a rural region of Spain