ABSTRACT
In this position paper we discuss the quality of demand point approximations for location problems. There are three reasons why this research is important: (i) urban planners frequently make the simplifying assumption of restricting facility location to demand points, perhaps because they feel that demand points are the only points that control the eventual locations of the facilities and hence are a good subset of feasible points for facility location; (ii) reducing the number of feasible solutions enhances our ability to solve larger location problems, which is important from an applications standpoint; and (iii) demand point approximations lead to heuristic solutions for the actual problem. We summarize previous and ongoing research in this area and also provide directions for future research.
