IOS Press
Printable view
Journal Article
Effective spatial clustering methods for optimal facility establishment

Effective spatial clustering methods for optimal facility establishment

JournalIntelligent Data Analysis
PublisherIOS Press
ISSN1088-467X (Print) 1571-4128 (Online)
IssueVolume 13, Number 1 / 2009
DOI10.3233/IDA-2009-0356
Pages61-84
Subject GroupComputer & Communication Sciences
Pay-Per-View Copyright Statement
Welcome!
To use the personalized features of this site, please log in or register.
If you have forgotten your username or password, we can help.


Export this article
Export this article as RIS | Text
 
Authors
Ashkan Zarnani1, 2, Masoud Rahgozar1, 2, Caro Lucas1, 2, Fattaneh Taghiyareh2

1Database Research Group, Control and Intelligent Processing Center of Excellence, Tehran, Iran
2School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Selecting optimal locations for new facilities is a critical decision in organizations that provide field-based services such as delivery, maintenance and emergency services. The total logistics cost and facility establishment cost are the main objectives of the location selection procedure. With the increasing size of this problem in today's applications, the aspects of efficiency and scalability have developed into major challenges. In this paper, we study the use of spatial clustering methods to solve this problem and propose two new algorithms. The new algorithms determine the optimal locations of the new facilities plus their optimal total count during the search process. We have conducted many experiments for empirical comparative study on the application of several spatial clustering algorithms for optimal facility establishment. The benchmarks are conducted with both real world and synthetic data sets. The results reveal advantages of the proposed algorithms and confirm that these algorithms have better performance in terms of efficiency and objectives in the field-based services. Hence, the higher scalability and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms make them suitable solutions for the problem of optimal facility establishment with large databases.

Keywords
Spatial data mining, field-based services, spatial clustering