Solving a home-care districting problem in an urban setting

This article describes a districting study undertaken for the Côte-des-Neiges local community health clinic in Montreal. A territory must be partitioned into six districts by suitably grouping territorial basic units. Five districting criteria must be respected: indivisibility of basic units, respec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the Operational Research Society 2003-11, Vol.54 (11), p.1141-1147
Main Authors: Blais, M, Lapierre, S D, Laporte, G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Boroughs
Canada
Case-Oriented Papers
community health clinic
districting
Exact sciences and technology
Flows in networks. Combinatorial problems
Health care
Health services
Heuristics
Human geography
Mathematical methods
multi-criteria optimization
Nurses
Objective functions
Operational research and scientific management
Operational research. Management science
Operations research
Organization theory
Rail lines
Systems analysis
Tabu search
Territories
Travel time
Urban planning
Workloads
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Summary:This article describes a districting study undertaken for the Côte-des-Neiges local community health clinic in Montreal. A territory must be partitioned into six districts by suitably grouping territorial basic units. Five districting criteria must be respected: indivisibility of basic units, respect for borough boundaries, connectivity, visiting personnel mobility, and workload equilibrium. The last two criteria are combined into a single objective function and the problem is solved by means of a tabu search technique that iteratively moves a basic unit to an adjacent district or swaps two basic units between adjacent districts. The problem was solved and the clinic management confirmed its satisfaction after a 2 year implementation period.
ISSN:0160-5682
1476-9360
DOI:10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601625