Test Center Location Problem: A bi-objective Model and Algorithms

Mansoor Davoodia; Justin M. Calabrese

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arXiv · 2311.14755

Test Center Location Problem: A bi-objective Model and Algorithms

Mansoor Davoodia·Justin M. Calabrese

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Abstract

The optimal placement of healthcare facilities, including the placement of diagnostic test centers, plays a pivotal role in ensuring efficient and equitable access to healthcare services. However, the emergence of unique complexities in the context of a pandemic, exemplified by the COVID-19 crisis, has necessitated the development of customized solutions. This paper introduces a bi-objective integer linear programming model designed to achieve two key objectives: minimizing average travel time for individuals visiting testing centers and maximizing an equitable workload distribution among testing centers. To address this problem, we propose a customized local search algorithm based on the Voronoi diagram. Additionally, we employ an $\epsilon$-constraint approach, which leverages the Gurobi solver. We rigorously examine the effectiveness of the model and the algorithms through numerical experiments and demonstrate their capability to identify Pareto-optimal solutions. We show that while the Gurobi performs efficiently in small-size instances, our proposed algorithm outperforms it in large-size instances of the problem.

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Mansoor Davoodia, Justin M. Calabrese. 2023-11-23. Test Center Location Problem: A bi-objective Model and Algorithms. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.14755

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