The minisum location problem on an undirected network with continuous link demands (Q580156)

In the one-median problem, a facility is to be located on a network minimizing total travel distances from the facility to customer demands restricted to nodal locations. In reality, however, demands do occur on links of a network. Thus, aggregation of or restriction to nodal demands may not be a satisfactory approximation. In this paper, we generalize the one-median problem to a network with discrete nodal as well as general continuous link demands. Properties of the total travel distance, as a function of the facility's location, are examined. We introduce an exact and a heuristic procedure to find an optimal location for the facility. An efficient algorithm is developed when the network is a tree.