Facility Location with Changing Demand Levels

摘要

The paper identifies six strategies that may be considered by a planner in the location of public facilities over time. All the strategies share the common goal of producing the optimal locational arrangement at the end of a specified planning period, where optimality is defined in terms of cost minimization. However, the paths taken by each toward the optimal arrangement differ markedly.The analysis focuses on two main questions. The first is a comparison at any given point in time of the demand levels that result from implementing the various strategies. The second is a consideration of the relative costs involved in instituting two of the strategies. The appendix supplies the proofs of the main theorems derived for the demand level comparisons.