Single facility location problems with unbounded unit balls (Q1423709)

In continuous location theory distance functions are modeled typically by gauges of compact convex sets containing the origin in their interior. In some cases it might be useful to drop the boundedness condition an only require ``closed'' instead of ``compact''. Distance functions defined by unbounded gauges do not satisfy the definiteness property and therefore have zero-distance regions. Since in convex analysis many results related to gauges have been developed without assuming the boundedness the authors develop in this paper a theory for continuous location problems with unbounded unit balls. In this paper it is shown how distance functions can be evaluated using only a subset of directions of their unit balls. A geometrical characterization of the set of optimal solutions as well as a solution procedure for these generalized continuous location problems is developed. In the objective of the location problem the globalizing function is a monotone gauge. This approach covers minisum and minimax location problems.