OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74

DOI 10.1007/s12597-012-0098-x
A P P L I C AT I O N A RT I C L E

An effective heuristic for the P-median problem

with application to ambulance location

Michael Dzator & Janet Dzator

Accepted: 18 July 2012 / Published online: 3 August 2012

# Operational Research Society of India 2012

Abstract We consider the p-median problem which is to find the location of p-

facilities so as to minimize the average weighted distance or time between demand
points and service centers. Many heuristic algorithms have been proposed for this
problem. In this paper we present a simple new heuristic which is effective for
moderately size problem. The heuristic uses a reduction and an exchange procedure.
Our methodology is tested on 400 randomly generated problems with 10 to 50
customer locations as well as 6 well known literature test problems. We also compare
our method with the Branch and Bound method in terms of quality and computational
time using a larger problem size of 150 customer locations. For the random problems
the generated solutions were on average within 0.61 % of the optimum. A similar
result was achieved for the literature test problems. A comparative analysis with
literature heuristics supports the superiority of our method. The computational time of
our heuristic is 0.75 % of the Branch and Bound Method. We also apply our heuristic
to a case study involving the location of emergency vehicles (ambulances) in Perth
City (Australia).

Keywords Heuristics . Facilities . Location . P-median problem

1 Introduction

The fundamental objectives of locating facilities can be summarized into three

categories. The first category refers to those designed to cover demand within a
specified time or distance. This objective gives rise to location problems which are
known as the Location Set Covering Problem (LSCP) and the Maximal Covering

M. Dzator (*)
Department of Mathematics, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia
e-mail: Michael.Dzator@newcastle.edu.au

J. Dzator
School of Business, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia
OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74 61

Location Problem (MCLP). The LSCP seeks to locate the minimum number of
facilities required to ‘cover’ all demand or population in an area. The MCLP is to
locate a predetermined number of facilities to maximize the demand or population
that is covered. The second category refers to those designed to minimize maximum
distance. This results in a location problem known as the p-center problem which
addresses the difficulty of minimizing the maximum distance that a demand or
population is from its closet facility given that p facilities are to be located. The third
category refers to those designed to minimize the average weighted distance or time.
This objective leads to a location problem known as the p-median problem. The p-
median problem finds the location of p facilities to minimize the demand weighted
average or total distance between demand or population and their closest facility.
A criterion for finding a good location for emergency facilities is the improvement
of response times to emergency calls. The response time for these emergency
facilities depend primarily on the distance between the emergency facilities and the
emergency sites. An important aim is to locate these facilities such that the average
(total) distance traveled by those who visit or use these facilities is minimized. This
measures the effectiveness and efficiency of the emergency facilities. Thus, the utility
derived from using these facilities increases as the distance between them decreases.
In other words, as travel distances decrease, facility accessibility increases and the
effectiveness of the located facilities increases giving rise to a decrease in response
time.
In facility location problem an important application is the location of emergency
facilities in city (Savas [1], Fitzsimmons [2], Swoveland et al. [3], Gendreau et al. [4],
Repede and Bernardo [5], McAleer and Naqvi [6], Goldberg et al. [7], Fujiwara et al.
[8]) A number of authors have used the p-median model to locate emergency
facilities. These include Calvo and Marks [9]; Berlin et al. [10]; Mirchandani [11];
Carson and Batta [12]; Serra and Marianov [13]; Paluzzi [14] Caccetta and Dzator
[15, 16] and Dzator [17]. Our focus in this paper is on the p-median problem. We
focus on the p-median problem because unlike the covering problem, the coverage
distance for the p-median problem is unrestricted and the number of facilities to be
located is known. These properties of the p-median problem measure the effective-
ness of the facility location by evaluating the average distance between the customers
and facilities. Moreover, as reported by Uyeno and Seeberg [18] in their study,
covering procedures tend to favor less congested rural areas over urban areas. In
addition, the p-median problem can be formulated so as to minimize the average
response time.
In this paper we focus on the simple heuristics which are based on Vertex
Substitution (Exchange). We compare our method on a test set of 6 literature prob-
lems as well as a set of 400 randomly generated problems with n ranging from 10 to
50 with Myopic heuristic (Greedy), the neighborhood search heuristic of Maranzana
[19] and the Exchange heuristic of Teitz and Bart [20]. We also compare our method
with the Branch and Bound (BB) using the problem size of 150 for 20 different
problems. The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the p-median problem is
discussed. Section 3 briefly describes the literature heuristics that we use in our
comparative analysis. Section 4 presents our new reduction based heuristic. Compu-
tational results are presented and discussed in Section 5. We apply our methodology
to a case study concerning the location of ambulances in a city in Section 6.
62 OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74

2 The P-median problem

The objective of the p-median problem is to find the locations of p facilities to

minimize the demand weighted total distance (total cost) between each demand node
and the nearest facility. For the p-median problem the cost of serving demands at
node i is the product of the demand at node i and the distance between demand node i
and the nearest facility to node i.
I the set of demand nodes indexed by i
J the set of candidate facility locations, indexed by j
p the number of servers to be deployed or facilities to be located
ai the population at the demand node i
dij distance between demand node i ∈ I and candidate sites j ∈ J

(
1; if demands at node i 2 I are assigned to a facility at candidate site j 2 J
Yij ¼
0; otherwise
(
1; if we locate at candidate site j 2 J
Xj ¼
0; otherwise

X X
Minimize
i
ad Y
j i ij ij
ð1Þ

subject to
P
Y
j2J ij
¼ 1; 8i 2 I ð2Þ

X
Xj ¼ p ð3Þ
j2J

Yij  Xj ; 8i 2 I; j 2 J ð4Þ

Yij 2 f0; 1g; 8i 2 I; j 2 J ð5Þ

Xj 2 f0; 1g; 8j 2 J ð6Þ

The objective (1) is to minimize the total distance from customers or clients to their
nearest facility. Constraint (2) shows that the demand of each customer or client must
be met. From constraint (3), the number of facilities to be located is p. Constraint (4)
shows that customers must be supplied from open facility. Constraints (5) and (6)
present the problem as a binary integer programming. The above formulation
assumes that the potential facility sites are nodes on the network. Hakimi [21] showed
that allowing facilities to be located on the arcs of the network instead of the nodes
would not reduce total travel cost.
OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74 63

The p-median problem is computationally difficult to solve by exact methods

because the problem is NP-hard on general networks as shown by Kariv and Hakimi
[22]. Exact algorithms based on the methods of Branch and Bound (Daskin [23],
Eaton et al. [24]) and Branch and Cut (Toregas et al. [25], Plane and Hendrick [26])
have been successfully used for small problems. However, solutions from the p-
median model are considered efficient since they bring the facility locations into
closer proximity of the users. The difficulty of solving the p-median problem by
exact method has led researchers to consider sub optimal solutions generated by
heuristic approaches. Heuristics for solving the p-median problem have been dis-
cussed in Daskin [23], Maranzana [19], Teitz and Bart [20] and Densham and
Rushton [27], Ashayeri et al., [28], Simulated Annealing (Chiyoshi and Galvao;
[29], Ringhini; [30]), Genetic Algorithm (Alp et al.; [31], Bozkaya et al.; [32], Chiou
and Lan; [33], Dvorett; [34]) and Tabu Search (Salhi; [35], Rolland et al.; [36] and
Voss; [37]).

3 The primary P-median heuristics

The p-median problem, as stated earlier, is a difficult problem to solve exactly so

there are many heuristics which have been developed to solve it. The Myopic,
Neighborhood and Exchange heuristics are examples of primary heuristics, applied
to solve the p-median problem. These heuristics use all the values of the weighted
distance matrix without deleting any extreme values before locating facilities. In
considering column totals we may not select a location because of a very large cost
entry. Since in practice one would never allocate a customer (demand) to very distant
facility, it would make sense to eliminate large entries before taking column sums.
Our new heuristic will implement this idea.
(i) Myopic Algorithm (MA) for the P-Median Problem
The myopic heuristic is a greedy type which works in the following way. Firstly, a
facility is located in such a way as to minimize the total cost for all customers.
Facilities are then added one by one until p is reached. For this heuristic, the
location that gives the minimum cost is selected. The main problem with this
approach is that once a facility is selected it stays in all subsequent solutions.
Consequently, the final solution attained may be far from optimal. Using other
heuristics such as neighborhood search heuristic and other improvement heuristics
(which are discussed later) will improve the solution obtained from the myopic
algorithm. This heuristic is specifically known as Greedy-Add since facilities are
added one-by-one to attain the required number of facilities. The reverse approach
is known as Greedy-Drop which starts with facilities located at all potential facility
sites and then eliminate (drop) the facility that has the least impact on the objective
function. This method eliminates the facilities one-by-one until the required num-
ber of facilities p remains.
The outline of the Myopic algorithm as indicated by Daskin [23] is presented
below as follows:-
Step 1: Initialize k00 and Xk 0{}, the empty set.
Step 2: Increase k, the counter on the number of facilities located.
64 OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74

P
Step 3: Compute Zjk ¼ i hi d ði; j [ Xk1 Þ for each node j, which is not in the
set Xk−1, where hi is the demand at node i.
Step 4: Find the node j*(k) that minimizes Zjk . Add node j*(k) to the set Xk−1 to
obtain the set Xk.
Step 5: If k 0 P stop. Go to step 2 if k < P.
(ii) Neighborhood Search Heuristic (NS)
Maranzana [19] proposed the Neighborhood search heuristic which is de-
scribed as follows. We begin with any set of p facility nodes. The demand nodes
are then divided into p subsets and for each subset, a demand node is allocated
to the nearest facility node. The set of nodes assigned to a facility constitutes a
“neighborhood” around that facility. Then within each neighborhood, the 1-
median problem can be solved optimally by simply evaluating each potential
site in the neighborhood and the best set of facilities is selected. The chosen
facilities are then relocated to the optimal 1-median locations within each
neighborhood. The node giving the optimal for each subset is found for each
subset resulting in a new pattern of facility nodes. If any facility sites are
relocated, new neighborhoods can be defined and the heuristic is repeated. This
process is repeated until the facility nodes pattern remains the same as that in the
previous step. That is the process is continued until there is no change in the
facility sites or the neighborhoods.
The outline of this heuristic is presented as follows:
Step 1: Select arbitrarily m distinct points px1 ; px2 ; . . . ; pxm from set of m points
P.
Step 2: Determine a corresponding partition of P, Px1 ; . . . ; Pxm ; which is
associated with the array of m points, px1 ; . . . ; pxm by putting Pxi ¼
 
pk ; Dk;xi  Dk;xj for all j , where Dk;xi and Dk;xj are the minimal
path lengths from points pk to pxi and pk to pxj , respectively.
Step 3: Determine a center of gravity, cxi for each Pxi . (The centerP of gravity of the
partitions Q ⊆ P for the point p j is defined as: D w 
Pk 2Q j;k k
P
D
Pk 2Q i;k k
w for all i, where w k is the weight associated with the
point pk.)
Step 4: If cxi ¼ pxi for all i, computation is stopped and the current values of
pxi and Pxi constitute the desired solution. Otherwise, set pxi ¼ cxi and
return to Step 2.
(iii) Teitz and Bart [20]-Exchange Heuristic (EH)
This is one of the early exchange heuristics developed by Teitz and
Bart [20] for the p-median problem. The basic idea is to move a facility from
the location it occupies in the current solution to an unused site. The heuristic
starts by choosing an initial set of p number of nodes as the solution. Then a
node which is not in the current solution is selected to substitute for each of the
p nodes in turn. We find the objective value in each case and compare the
changes in the objective function. The substitution leading to the biggest de-
crease in the objective function is selected and is exchanged for a node in the
current solution. This exchange of nodes results in a new (improved) solution
configuration and this process continues until there is no further improvement in
OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74 65

the objective value. The solution thus obtained is a local optimum, not a global
optimum.
The outline of the heuristic is presented as follows:
Step 1: Select an initial set of any p potential facility sites among the n nodes
and call this the current best facility set.
Step 2: Let the candidate facility sites that are not in use in the current best
facility sets be denoted by μ. If the set μ is empty then go to step 6.
Otherwise, go to step 3.
Step 3: Select a candidate facility site v ∊ μ, then remove facility site v from μ
and go to step 4.
Step 4: Calculate Δj for j01, 2, …p which denotes a change in the objective
function with moving the jth facility site to candidate node v.
Step 5: Define Δmin to be the minimum change for the objective value if any
node in facility set is removed and replace by another one which is not
in that in the set. If Δmin ≥ 0, go to step 6. Otherwise, create a new
current facility set by replacing the location associated with the mini-
mum Δj with facility site v and go to step 6.
Step 6: If set μ is empty but currently updated which results in changes in
facility sites in the current best solution since μ was last defined, then
go to step 2. If set μ is empty and there is no change in the current best
solution since μ was defined, stop, current solution is locally optimal. If
μ is not the empty set, then go to step 3.

4 The new reduction heuristic (RH)

The primary heuristics described in the previous section use all values in the weighted
distance matrix. Thus a location may not be selected because of a very large cost. In
this section we will eliminate extreme values as would happen in real applications. To
obtain the initial solution set for the heuristic we first of all eliminate the extreme
values in each column. The number of extreme values to be eliminated depends on
the size of the problem being considered. That is, the larger the size, the greater the
number of extreme values to be eliminated. We define:
8
>
> p; if n  29;
<
a ¼ 2p; if 30  n  39; ð7Þ
> h n i 
>
:  1 p; otherwise;
10
where p is the number of facilities and n is the number of nodes.

4.1 Repeated reduction heuristic (RRH)

Input: n, p and α
Step 1: Delete the highest α number of values from each column and let the
resulting number of demand nodes be equal to n* (i.e. n* 0 n−α).
66 OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74

Step 2: Sum the values for each column after deleting the extreme values, then
arrange the total values in ascending order of magnitude, and choose the
first p nodes corresponding to the first p totals as the initial set.
Step 3: Use the original weighted distance matrix and set the distance values (for
both rows and columns) corresponding to the initial set of facilities to zero
and sum the columns of the resulting distance matrix. For example, if the
initial set is {1,2,3} then all values in rows and columns 1, 2 and 3 are
changed to zero before the summation of each column.
Step 4: Swap all the nodes which are not in the initial solution set with the nodes in
the initial solution set. For example we select the nodes with the lowest
number from the non-initial set and substitute for every node in the initial.
We continue the process with the next lowest node number until all the
nodes not in the initial set are used for swapping with the nodes of the initial
set. This will lead to a number of possible solution set for Step 5.
Step 5: Choose the set corresponding to the minimum value as the current solution.
Step 6: With the current solution as the initial solution we return to Step 3. We
continue this process until the objective value of the previous solution is the
same as the current solution. We then consider the result as the final
solution.

5 Computational results

We have implemented our new heuristic in C++ and tested on sets of 400 randomly
generated sets of data for a [10, 100] matrix with n ranging from 10 to 50 in steps of
ten and p ranging from 2 to 5 and 20 different problems of size 150. That is, for each
problem size n and for locating 2, 3, 4 or 5 facilities, 80 uniformly distributed random
problems are generated. We obtained the Branch and Bound (BB) method (BB) from
the SITATION software. In addition, we apply our heuristic to 6 literature problems:
the 55-node (Swain; [38]), a 42-node (Dantzig et al.; [39]), a 33-node (Karg and
Thompson; [40]), a 30-node (Toregas et al.; [25]) a 12-node (Daskin; [23]) and a 9-
node (Hribar and Daskin; [41]) problem. We compare the results from the heuristics
with the optimal values obtained by complete enumeration. This will give an indica-
tion of whether the new heuristics can provide a good alternative to the exact solution
techniques which are in many cases complex and expensive to apply. All computa-
tions were carried on a personal computer with an Intel Pentium 4 processor, 2.8GHZ
and 448MB of RAM. The statistic used to measure the quality of the solution is given
O  100 , where H is the optimal value resulting from the implementation of the
as HO
heuristic and O is the true optimal value.
The 55-node data set represents 55 communities in the Washington D.C. (USA)
area. Demands for each node were generated in pseudo-random manner with most
large demands at the center of the region and most small demands at the outer region.
The 42-node and 33-node problem represent 42 cities (Dantzig et al.; [39]) and 33
cities (Karg and Thompson; [40]) in USA respectively. The 30-node problem repre-
sents 30 communities in New York (Toregas et al.; [25]). We assume uniform demand
for all of these problems. These test problems have been used by several authors
OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74 67

including Khumawala [42]; Hillman and Rushton [43]; Church and Meadow [44];
Neebe [45] and Rahman and Smith [46]. The 12-node and 9-node problems represent
network data from (Daskin; [23]) and a network data from (Hribar and Daskin; [41]),
respectively.
The results of the literature heuristics were obtained from the SITATION software
(Daskin, [23]). The solutions of the heuristics were compared with the optimal
solutions, which were determined by the implementation of the Lagrangian relaxation
in the SITATION software [23].
The results for the randomly generated text problem are given in Tables 1 and 2
whilst the results for literature test problems are given in Table 3 and Fig. 1. Note that
for the literature problems we report the average ranging p from 1 to 10.
The average values for 10, 20 30, 40 and 50 nodes for RRH, EH, NS and MA in
Table 1 are 0.61 %, 0.83 %, 2.37 % and 2.41 % respectively. Table 2 shows the
comparison of RRH with the Branch and Bound (BB) method. RRH is within 1.22 %
of BB but RRH is 0.75 % of BB computational time. The average values for each
heuristic for the five literature data sets in ascending order in Table 3 are as: RRH-
0.45 %, Exchange-0.95 %, Neighborhood-2.92 %, Myopic-6.09 %. RRH performs
better as shown in Tables 1 and 3 which is confirmed by Fig. 1.

Table 1 Comparison perfor-

Number of Number of MA EH NS RRH
mance of RRH and the existing
nodes (n) facilities (p)
heuristics using the 400 random
data
10 2 1.47 0.47 1.33 0.08
3 3.22 0.30 3.01 0.26
4 4.20 1.34 4.11 0.59
5 1.74 0 1.74 0.35
20 2 0.63 0.16 0.63 0
3 2.15 1.32 2.15 0.49
4 4.31 1.37 4.31 1.14
5 4.77 1.36 4.77 1.28
30 2 0.77 0.01 0.77 0
3 2.63 1.10 2.63 0.40
4 3.53 1.07 3.26 1.06
5 4.12 0.81 4.12 1.21
40 2 0.92 0.32 0.92 0.28
3 1.68 1.43 1.68 0.44
4 2.52 1.83 2.52 1.41
5 2.55 1.36 2.55 1.38
50 2 0.63 0.37 0.63 0.08
3 1.86 0.47 1.86 0.47
4 1.65 0.80 1.65 0.50
5 2.98 0.82 2.98 0.91
Average values for the heuristics 2.41 0.83 2.37 0.61
68 OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74

Table 2 Objective value and CPU time in seconds for different random data for n0150 and p05 for 20
problems

Data Objective Objective RRHBB

BB  100 CPU time CPU time
value RRH value BB (sec) RRH (sec) BB

1 2846 2789 2.04 13.17 1,311.26

2 2815 2764 1.84 24.23 2,200.00
3 2908 2831 2.71 17.87 5,523.15
4 2763 2763 0 32.20 3,000.26
5 2731 2731 0 15.40 1,532.38
6 2864 2831 1.16 27.97 2,596.23
7 2799 2761 1.37 21.85 2,809.53
8 2898 2785 4.05 22.87 1,845.94
9 2720 2720 0 12.94 423.79
10 2874 2831 1.51 15.83 5,421.32
11 2776 2771 0.18 18.29 1,732.32
12 2839 2832 0.24 19.40 3,264.39
13 2824 2805 0.67 16.20 3,650.01
14 2836 2814 0.78 16.13 3,304.75
15 2837 2769 2.45 28.62 2,769.26
16 2727 2727 0 15.43 704.74
17 2769 2769 0 32.62 2,205.37
18 2809 2809 0 35.13 5,168.86
19 2842 2776 2.37 11.61 1,928.00
20 2850 2764 3.11 21.34 3,767.17
Average 1.22 21.05a 2,757.94

a
The computational time of our heuristic is 0.75 % of the Branch and Bound method

6 A case study: emergency facility location in Perth

In this section, we apply the new heuristic RRH discussed in Section 4 to locate
ambulance stations in two sub-regions of the Perth Metropolitan area, namely the

Table 3 Summary of comparison using the literature data

Literature data Average value (%)

Myopic Exchange Neighborhood RRH

55-node (Swain; 1971) 4.07 0.42 1.34 0.47

42-node (Dantzig et al.; 1964) 5.20 0.94 3.65 0.90
33-node (Karg and Thompson; 1964) 6.28 0.98 1.74 0.64
30-node (Toregas et al.; 1971) 1.46 0.04 1.17 0
12-node (Daskin; 1995) 13.46 2.38 6.70 0.24
Average values for 5 data sets 6.09 0.95 2.95 0.45
OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74 69

16

Myopic
Exchange

Average Deviation from Optimal Value (%)

14
Neighborhood
RRH

12

10

0
55-node 42-node 33-node 30-node 12-node
Literature Data
Fig. 1 Comparison of the new and existing heuristics using literature data

South East Metropolitan Region and the Central Metropolitan Region. For these two
regions we compare the performance of the new heuristic locations with that of other
existing heuristics. We also compare our locations with existing locations of the
ambulance stations in the South East and Central Metropolitan regions and discuss
the improvement achieved. The hospital emergency departments in Western Australia
dealt with 837,504 attendances in 2009 [47]. At present, there are about 27 ambu-
lance locations in the Perth Metropolitan area. The response time (time elapsed from
the dispatch of an ambulance to its arrival at the emergency scene) which is one of the
key indicators used to measure the performance of ambulance has been increasing in
Perth metropolitan area for the period 1995 to 2010. Currently 87.6 % of emergency
calls were responded within 15 min (Ahern [48]).
Perth, the metropolitan capital of Western Australia covers approximately 5,000
square kilometers, extends 70 km along the coast and had an estimated 2.30 million
residents in 2010. The Perth metropolitan area is divided into five major statistical
divisions, namely Central Metropolitan, East Metropolitan, North Metropolitan,
South East Metropolitan and South West Metropolitan. We consider the South East
Metropolitan area and the Central Metropolitan area.
All location-allocation heuristics need information about the distance or travel cost
between the demand locations and the service or candidate locations. For this study
the distance matrix from node to node for the study is determined by distance data
developed by a company by the name travelmate [49]. This distance is the road
network among the various suburbs in the Perth metropolitan area. Hence the distance
values are the shortest road travel distances (equivalent to distance on a road map)
between the origin and the destination. We weighted the distance by taking into
consideration only the population of the origin suburb since we can also weigh by
considering the nature of the road. The fact is that the better the road network the
easier it is for a vehicle to move from one suburb to another. The weighted distance is
70 OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74

Table 4 Total demand weighted distance (Km) for heuristics and existing location for South East
Metropolitan Region

Number of RRH Myopic Exchange Neighborhood Optimal Existing location

facilities (EH) (NS) (O) (EL)

2 1369 1385 1385 1385 1369 1404

3 914 914 914 914 914 1101
4 696 696 696 696 696 818
5 557 607 557 557 557 688
6 473 521 473 502 473 650
7 418 431 418 418 416 608
8 361 380 361 361 361 487
9 306 325 307 307 306 418

thus the product of the weight assigned to the origin suburb and the distance between
the origin suburb and the destination suburb. This weight is proportional to the
population of each suburb which is shown in Tables 4 and 5. We note from the tables
that the larger the population the larger the weight. This weighted distance is
calculated for each of the 26 suburbs in South East Metropolitan region and the 25
suburbs in Central Metropolitan region. This calculation is done by noting the
distance from a suburb to all other suburb and each value is multiplied by the weight
of the origin suburb. This is repeated for every suburb and values are recorded as a
26×26 and 25×25 matrix representing South East Metropolitan and Central Metro-
politan area respectively.
We note from these calculations that the weighted distance of 26 suburbs of South
East Metropolitan region ranges from about 4 to 1,009 km. In the case of Central
Metropolitan region the minimum value is 1 km while the maximum is 171 km
resulting in a range of 1 to 171 km.
Tables 4 and 5 show the comparison of total demand weighted distance for the new
and existing heuristics corresponding to South East metropolitan area and Central
metropolitan area respectively. Tables 6 and 7 shows the existing location and the

Table 5 Total demand weighted distance (Km) for heuristics and existing location for Central
Metropolitan Region

Number RRH Myopic Exchange Neighborhood Optimal (O) Existing

of facilities (EH) (NS) location (EL)

2 401 463 401 401 401 485

3 303 329 303 303 303 426
4 246 281 246 250 246 304
5 210 238 210 210 202 209
6 166 196 183 183 166 174
7 138 169 139 139 138 147
8 117 150 117 117 117 125
9 103 131 103 103 103 105
OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74 71

Table 6 Comparison of existing locations and RRH locations and minimum cost saving by RRH for South
East Metropolitan Region

Number of facilities Existing locations RRH locations Cost saved (%)

2 {13,22} {14,25} 2.5

3 {1,13,22} {1,14,24} 20.4
4 {1,11,13,22} {1,8,14,24} 17.5
5 {1,7,11,13,22} {1,8,14,23,26} 23.5
6 {1,7,11,13,16,22} {1,8,13,14,23,26} 37.4
7a {1,7,11,13,16,22,24} {1,4,8,13,14,23,26} 46.1a
8 {1,7,11,13,14,16,22,24} {1,2,8,9,13,14,23,26} 34.9
9 {1,7,8,11,13,14,16,22,24} {1,2,4,8,9,13,14,23,25} 36.6

a
The number of ambulance stations at present is seven

location due to the new heuristic (RRH). The tables also shows the cost saved if
ambulance stations are located using our new heuristic.
Currently, there are seven ambulance stations in the South East Metropolitan area
while in the Central Metropolitan area there are three. In the case of the South East
Metropolitan region the eighth and the ninth ambulance locations were chosen by
considering the best (minimum) objective value if any location is added to the
existing set of locations. We use a similar procedure to obtain the location for
facilities that are less than seven facilities. For example, to obtain six facilities for
existing locations, we drop a location one by one and choose the six locations that
give the minimum value. The same procedure was used for the locations in the
Central Metropolitan region. These locations are shown in Tables 6 and 7. There are
27 stations in the whole of the Perth Metropolitan area.
The new reduction heuristic (RRH) was applied to determine the optimal locations
for ambulance stations. The solutions generated represent a significant improvement
when compared to the existing location pattern. We note from this study that if RRH

Table 7 Comparison of existing locations and RRH locations and minimum cost saving by RRH for
Central Metropolitan Region

Number of facilities Existing locations RRH locations Cost saved (%)

2 {9,13} {5,14} 20.9

3a {9,13,23} {3,5,20} 40.5a
4 {3,9,13,23} {3,7,9,20} 23.5
5 {3,7,9,13,23} {3,5,8,9,20} −0.5
6 {3,5,7,9,13,23} {3,5,8,9,13,19} 4.8
7 {1,3,5,7,9,13,23} {2,5,8,9,13,14,18} 6.5
8 {1,3,5,7,9,13,14,23} {1,3,5,8,9,13,14,18} 6.8
9 {1,3,5,7,9,13,14,18,23} {1,2,3,5,8,9,13,14,18} 1.9

a
The number of ambulance stations at present is three
72 OPSEARCH (Jan–Mar 2013) 50(1):60–74

is used to locate the seven facilities in the South East Metropolitan area accessibility
is increased by 45.5 %. This results in the improvement of the average response time
by 6.82 min to 8.18 min when the new heuristic is used. In the case of the Central
Metropolitan area accessibility is increased by 40.5 % giving a 6.07 min reduction in
the average response time to 8.93 min.

7 Conclusions

This paper has focused on the facility location problem, which involves the determi-
nation of an optimal set of locations for the facilities. In particular, we consider the p-
median problem as an effective tool for locating emergency facilities. This problem
has been studied for the past 50 years and a number of heuristics have been proposed
since the problem is NP-hard. The most common heuristics to solve the p-median are
the ones based on vertex substitution. We have developed a new effective heuristic
based on a reduction technique that eliminate outliers and exchange routine that
improves the current solution. We tested our heuristic on a set of randomly generated
test problems as well as a set of literature test problems. In addition we applied our
methodology to locate ambulance stations in Perth Metropolitan. Our computational
results demonstrate the effectiveness of our heuristic.

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