The demand partitioning method for reducing aggregation errors in p-medianproblems

The demand partitioning method for reducing aggregation errors in the solut ion of aggregated p-median problems is introduced in this paper. The method consists of eliminating source A and B aggregation errors using the Curren t and Schilling (Geographical Analysis 1987;19:95-110) weighting method and then partitioning the basic spatial units to eliminate source C errors. Th ese two steps are repeated until all cost estimate error is eliminated in t he solution of the problem. Data from the Central Valley of Costa Rica are used to test this demand partitioning method. Specifically, population cens us data are used to represent demand for services while current health clin ics locations are the potential service supply points. The demand partition ing method outperforms current published methods for reducing source C erro rs.