| Article ID: | iaor200870 |
| Country: | Netherlands |
| Volume: | 42 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Start Page Number: | 1063 |
| End Page Number: | 1075 |
| Publication Date: | Nov 2006 |
| Journal: | Decision Support Systems |
| Authors: | Huang Bo, Liu Nan, Chandramouli Magesh |
| Keywords: | public service, heuristics: ant systems, artificial intelligence: decision support |
This paper analyzes a linear feature covering problem (LFCP) with distance constraints, and characterizes the problem by a fuzzy multi-objective (MO) optimization model. An integrated approach combining an Ant algorithm (LFCP-Ant) and a Geographic Information System (GIS) has been devised to solve the LFCP problem in large scale. The efficacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated using a case study of locating new fire stations in Singapore. A GIS has been used to transform the continuous problem into a discrete one, which is then solved using the LFCP-Ant. This algorithm employs a two-phase local search to improve both search efficiency and precision.