Max-min dispersion with capacity and cost for a practical location problem

Abstract

Diversity and dispersion problems deal with selecting a subset of elements from a given set in such a way that their diversity is maximized. This study considers a practical location problem recently proposed in the context of max–min dispersion models. It is called the generalized dispersion problem, and it models realistic applications by introducing capacity and cost constraints. We propose two effective linear formulations for this problem, and develop a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm based on the variable neighborhood search methodology, to solve real instances. Extensive numerical computational experiments are performed to compare our hybrid metaheuristic with the state-of-art heuristic, and with integer linear programming formulations (ILP). Results on public benchmark instances show the superiority of our proposal with respect to the previous algorithms. Our extensive experimentation reveals that ILP models are able to optimally solve medium-size instances with the Gurobi optimizer, although metaheuristics outperform ILP both in running time and quality in large-size instances.

Publication
Expert Systems with Applications
Isaac Lozano-Osorio
Isaac Lozano-Osorio
Artificial Intelligence Phd Student

Isaac Lozano graduated with a double degree in Computer Engineering and Computer Engineering from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, where he was awarded the prize for the Best Final Project. Subsequently, he completed a Master in Artificial Intelligence Research (UIMP). His main research interests are focused on the interface between Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research. Most of his publications deal with the development of metaheuristic procedures for graph modeled optimization problems.

Abraham Duarte
Abraham Duarte
Full Professor

Abraham Duarte is Full Professor in the Computer Science Department at the Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid, Spain). He has done extensive research in the interface between computer science, artificial intelligence, and operations research to develop solution methods based on Computational Intelligence (metaheuristics) for practical problems in operations-management areas such as logistics and supply chains, telecommunications, decision-making under uncertainty and optimization of simulated systems.