The pipeline and valve location problem

This paper, proposes an exact algorithm for the problem of locating a pipeline between two points of a network, as well as a set of safety valves which help control the damage caused by possible spills along the pipeline. A labelling approach is developed to determine simultaneously the optimal pipeline and valve locations, with the objective of optimising an impact measure that depends on the average number of accidents and their cost. Computational experiments on grid and random instances are presented in order to evaluate the algorithm's performance and to compare its results to the solutions provided by sequential approaches. [Received 11 May 2010; Revised 10 October 2010; Accepted 21 November 2010]