Multicriteria Analysis and Visualization of Location-Allocation Problems

In a location-allocation problem (LAP), an optimal number of facilities has to be placed in an area of interest in order to satisfy the customer demand. The optimization objective can be, e.g., to mini-mize costs or to maximize profit and the situation can be characterized by various constraints. The total location area may also be divided into regions which have each their special characteristics. There are of-ten several plausible scenarios for an LAP representing, for example, different budgets limitations, cost functions, or estimates for market growth. In this Thesis, the emphasis is on retail location-allocation problems and it is illustrated with a case study in retailing. When dealing with a large number of location-allocation solutions for various scenarios, it is necessary to examine which option is the best one according to specified criteria. The first objective of this Thesis is therefore to define decision criteria for retail applications. The proposed criteria include several monetary, facility related, and customer related attributes. Besides the facility locations and customer flows, location-allocation solutions are characterized by vari-ous derived properties, for example market share, distance to competitors, and the amount of unassigned demand. These derived properties also include the chosen decision criteria. When the total location area is composed of regions, these properties can be expressed for each region and thus have a spatial distribu