Location Selection – A Fuzzy Clustering Approach

* Abstract problems of Location Selection. Although no list can be considered exhaustive, Moore’s [1] enunciation of criteria still appears pertinent and can be considered as a fundamental basis for selection. Table 1 encapsulates some common criteria for selection. This paper uses the well-established Fuzzy C-Means Clustering Algorithm for suggesting a heuristic that effectively zeroes down upon a set of viable locations out of several alternatives. Besides the list of desirable location candidates, the methodology also provides a list of totally inappropriate alternatives that must be weeded out from the process of selection. The paper also proposes a self-devised scoring mechanism that is used to rank the short-listed locations. The proposed methodology is validated on three problems, and an example is presented. Table 1. Common Criteria used for Selection.