Towards unified formulations and extensions of two classical probabilistic location models

We give a unified view of Daskin's Maximum Expected Covering Location Problem (MEXCLP) and ReVelle and Hogan's Maximum Availability Location Problem (MALP), identifying similarities and dissimilarities between these models and showing how they relate to each other. These models arise in the location of servers in congested emergency systems. An existing extension of MEXCLP is reviewed; we then develop an extension of MALP and give the corresponding mathematical formulation. These two extensions are obtained when the simplifying assumptions of the original models are dropped and Larson's hypercube model is embedded into local search methods. In this paper these methods are further enhanced by the use of simulated annealing. Computational results are given for problems available in the literature. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.