Facility Location Decisions Based on Driving Distances on Spherical Surface

Facility location problems are concerned with the location of one or more facilities in a way that optimizes a certain objective such as minimizing transportation cost, providing equitable service to customers, capturing the largest market share, etc. Many facility location decisions involving distance objective functions on Spherical Surface have been approached using algorithmic, metaheuristic algorithms, branch-and-bound algorithm, approximation algorithms, simulation, heuristic techniques, and decomposition method. These approaches are most based on Euclidean distance or Great circle distance functions. However, if the location points are widely separated, the difference between driving distance, Euclidean distance and Great circle distance may be significant and this may lead to significant variations in the locations of the corresponding optimal source points. This paper presents a framework and algorithm to use driving distances on spherical surface and explores its use as a facility location decision tool and helps companies assess the optimal locations of facilities.