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This handbook treatment not only traces the development of location analysis right up to today´s state of the art, but also examines its application to a range of fields from geography and economics to more recent use in business and industrial engineering.

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Location analysis has matured from an area of theoretical inquiry that was designed to explain observed phenomena to a vibrant field which can be and has been used to locate items as diverse as landfills, fast food outlets, gas stations, as well as politicians and products in issue and feature spaces. Modern location science is dealt with by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners in geography, economics, operations research, industrial engineering, and computer science.

Given the tremendous advances location science has seen from its humble beginnings, it is time to look back. The contributions in this volume were written by eminent experts in the field, each surveying the original contributions that created the field, and then providing an up-to-date review of the latest contributions.

Specific areas that are covered in this volume include:
- The three main fields of inquiry: minisum and minimax problems and covering models
- Nonstandard location models, including those with competitive components, models that locate undesirable facilities, models with probabilistic features, and problems that allow interactions between facilities
- Descriptions and detailed examinations of exact techniques including the famed Weiszfeld method, and heuristic methods ranging from Lagrangean techniques to Greedy algorithms
- A look at the spheres of influence that the facilities generate and that attract customers to them, a topic crucial in planning retail facilities
- The theory of central places, which, other than in mathematical games, where location science was born

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Pioneering Developments in Location Analysis.- Uncapacitated and Capacitated Facility Location Problems.- Median Problems in Networks.- Continuous Center Problems.- Discrete Center Problems.- Covering Problems.- Equilibria in Competitive Location Models.- Sequential Location Models.- Conditional Locational Problems on Networks and in the Plane.- The Location of Undesirable Facilities.- Stochastic Analysis in Location Research.- Hub Location Problems: The Location of Interacting Facilities.- Exact Solution of Two Location Problems via Branch-and-Branch.- Exploititng Structure: Location Problems on Trees and Treelike Graphs.- Heuristics for Location Problems.- The Weiszfeld Algorithm: Proof, Amendments, and Extensions.- Lagrangean Relaxation-Based Techniques in the Solution of Facility Location Problems.- Gravity Modeling and its Impact on Location Analysis.- Voronoi Diagrams and their Uses.- Central Places: The Theories of von Thünen, Christaller, and Lösch.

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