A Method for Districting Among Facilities

A problem shared by many municipal agencies and many large industries is: Given n service facilities whose locations have been set in a region, how should that region best be apportioned among the facilities if each facility is to have primary responsibility for service in one district of the region? This paper presents a simple and intuitive procedure for determining the boundaries of the service districts, using the criterion that each facility serves all points to which it is closest in either distance or travel time. The procedure is designed to be computed rapidly, either by hand or on a computer.