Knowledge that Transforms

This paper views the location of emergency facilities as a set covering problem with equal costs in the objective. The sets are composed of the potential facility points within a specified time or distance of each demand point. One constraint is written for each demand point requiring “cover,” and linear programming is applied to solve the covering problem, a single-cut constraint being added as necessary to resolve fractional solutions.

This paper generalizes the M/G/1 queuing process by considering both the arrival and the service rates as being essentially arbitrary functions of the current number of customers in the system, and by assuming, moreover, that the amount of service demanded by a customer is conditioned by the queue length at the moment service is begun for that customer. Taking the imbedded Markov chain approach, the paper proposes a method for calculating (1) the limiting probability distribution of the congestion and (2) the expected value of the time needed to complete a service. An expression for the distribution of the waiting time is then given and its first moment deduced.