Multiobjective location of unwelcome or central facilities involving environmental aspects: A prototype of a decision support system

On locating useful but unwelcome facilities their undesirability may have a strong effect on the public's reaction making the traditional minimizing distance approach unsuitable. As well, locating central facilities minimizing only cost has proven to be also not adequate, since several other characteristics (pollution, traffic, etc.) must be included. In order to consider the conflicting criteria involved in the choice of sites, some mathematical multiobjective models have been proposed but, quite surprisingly, multiobjective decision making tools have scarcely been used. Since complexity is a major challenge on the multiobjective approach in this kind of problem we have developed an interactive approach (bicriteria at the moment). A prototype of a Decision Support System (DSS), based on a selected set of location-allocation models for undesirable or central facilities (to cover a significant range of common decision scenarios) and using this approach, is presented. This DSS is currently under development, for a Windows platform, having an open architecture and a usable user interface.