Slack, natural slack, and location covering

This paper presents a goal programming approach to location covering the contrasts the resultant models with other covering formulations. One of the primary differences between the models forwarded in this paper and those of previous studies is the notion of slack and natural slack in the definition of coverage relations. Our approach takes advantage of the latter concept, natural slack, and produces a location covering form which is more flexible in the determination of objective functions than that of other formulations. Furthermore, we show how the goal programming framework adopted herein allows consideration of a wider range of location covering policy issues.