The probabilistic p-center problem: Planning service for potential customers

Abstract

This work deals with the probabilistic p-center problem, which aims at minimizing the expected maximum distance between any site with demand and its center, considering that each site has demand with a specific probability. The problem is of interest when emergencies may occur at predefined sites with known probabilities. For this problem we propose and analyze different formulations as well as a Variable Neighborhood Search heuristic. Computational tests are reported, showing the potentials and limits of each formulation, the impact of their enhancements, and the effectiveness of the heuristic.