Solutions for districting problems with chance-constrained balancing requirements

2021

Abstract In this paper, a districting problem with stochastic demands is investigated. The goal is to divide a geographic area into p contiguous districts such that, with some given probability, the districts are balanced with respect to some given lower and upper thresholds. The problem is cast as a p -median problem with contiguity constraints that is further enhanced with chance-constrained balancing requirements. The total assignment cost of the territorial units to the representatives of the corresponding districts is used as a surrogate compactness measure to be optimized. Due to the tantalizing purpose of deriving a deterministic equivalent for the problem, a two-phase heuristic is d…