Coverage optimization in continuous space facility siting

Facility placement and associated service coverage are major concerns in urban and regional planning. In this paper an approach is detailed for the problem of covering spatial demand for service, where potential facilities are located in the continuous plane. It is shown that weighted demand, represented as points, lines or polygons, can be optimally served by a finite number of potential facility locations, called the polygon intersection point set (PIPS). The developed approach is an extension of a point‐based abstraction of demand to more general representations (e.g. points, lines or polygons). An empirical analysis of warning siren siting in Ohio is carried out, highlighting the applicability of this approach.