The Location of Interacting Hub Facilities

Abstract

Hubs are central facilities which act as switching points in networks connecting a set of interacting nodes. This paper develops several location models for hubs. The one-hub siting problem is equivalent to a Weber least cost location model. An empirical example demonstrates the relevance of this model for an understanding of contemporary express delivery networks. A new model describing the location of two hubs in a plane yields several interesting pairs of hub location under different assumptions about scale effects on the interfacility linkage: generally as these scale effects increase the locations of the hubs move apart.