A successful implementation of locating passive cooling facilities: The case of Northern Thailand

This paper reports the actual implementation of a location-allocation study, which is one aspect of the overall Passive Cooling (Thailand) Project conducted in Northern Thailand since 1985. The goal has been to generate decision supports for ‘optimal’ placements of cooling facilities and the assignment of sites to these facilities as part of the post-harvest handling-chain operation of agricultural products. The basic questions addressed in this work are the issues of how many facilities to set up and where to locate them for maximum utility. The present selected approach is to use discrete location-allocation modelling, as, among other reasons, the problem at hand has a most natural network setting. Direct methods as well as efficient heuristics are examined, and sample numerical results are reported as illustrations of the continual implementation.