Location of Rotterdam Fire Stations

In Rotterdam economizing should have its effects on the organization of the Fire Brigade. In order to deal with these problems the municipality decided to research the location of the fire stations. Based on earlier research by the OR-group in Twente, we were asked to investigate these problems in the following three fases. (I) is the determination of the number of fire stations needed. (II) is the number of fire stations needed with respect to the present locations. (III) is the generation and evaluation of alternative locations in view of safety.A road netwerk approach (P-median/center) is used for determining the set of possible location sites. The set-covering formulation of the location problem is solved by a translation to a satisfiability problem.