Inequality measures and equitable approaches to location problems

Location problems can be considered as multiple criteria models where for each client (spatial unit) there is defined an individual objective function, which measures the effect of a location pattern with respect to the client satisfaction (e.g., it expresses the distance or travel time between the client and the assigned facility). This results in a multiple criteria model taking into account the entire distribution of individual effects (distances). Moreover the model enables us to introduce the concept of equitable efficiency which links location problems with theories of inequality measurement. In this paper special attention is paid to solution concepts based on the bicriteria optimization of the mean distance and the absolute inequality measures. The restrictions for the trade-offs are identified which guarantee that the bicriteria approaches comply with the concept of equitable efficiency. These results are further generalized to bicriteria approaches not using directly the trade-off technique. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.