ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF QUANTITATIVE FACILITY LOCATION MODELS - THE CASE OF A HOSPITAL IN A RURAL REGION

Recently a public committee has been appointed by the Israeli governme nt. The committer was assigned to prepare regional plans for the north eastern Negev, in the southern part of Israel, in order to absorb some of the large waves of immigrants (about 400,000) expected by the year 2000. Among the strategic issues treated by the committee were the qu estions when, where and whether to build a new hospital in the area. T he locational decision was studied by first identifying a finite candi date set of possible sites. At the final stage various quantitative lo cational models were employed. In the next stage a subjective multicri teria model was further used to derive locationally preferred solution s. This paper focuses on the first stage. Furthermore, the suggested s olution approach is discussed in light of strategic issues.