| Article ID: | iaor20119873 |
| Volume: | 10 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Start Page Number: | 255 |
| End Page Number: | 273 |
| Publication Date: | Oct 2011 |
| Journal: | International Journal of Services and Operations Management |
| Authors: | Murad Abdulkader A |
| Keywords: | location, combinatorial optimization |
The aim of this paper is to discuss a GIS application created for evaluation exiting location of retail centres in Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia. In order to build this application, several data sets were collected including the location of existing retail centres as well as road network and city district boundaries. Detailed information about each retail centre were covered in this application including retail centre size, name, car parking size, number of rented and vacant shops. AecGIS software has been used to build a geo‐database that covers all of the collected data for this application. The created geo‐database has been designed with clear and user friendly interface. In order to analyse the existing location of retail centres, single and multiple layer functions have been applied on the created database. In addition, retail centres were classified based on single and multiple attributes. To evaluate the existing location of retail centres, spatial statistic functions have been used to measure the geographical distributions of retail centres as well as to the identify geographical patterns and clusters of the selected retail centres. The results of the spatial statistic analysis are useful for retail planners in drawing conclusions about the characteristics, patterns, and relationships of retail centres data.