Proposing a new mathematical model for the reliable facility location network design problem

The combined facility location and network design is an attractive practical problem in locating public and private facilities. Besides, considering the reliability in modeling offacility location problems is one of the most effective ways to hedge against failures of system from time to time. In reality, thecombined facility location network design problem with respect to the reliability of system has a number of applications in industries and services such as locating health care servicecenters, locating gas compressor stations, and designing water tubing networks. Accordingly, in this paper, for the first time, weconsider the combined facility location network design problem with respect to the reliability of system and propose a mixed integer non linear programming formulation to model it. Moreover, a practical case study in Iran is presented in detail to illustrate.

Keywords:

Facility location , Network design , Reliability , Case study , Health care