Maximising coverage of spatial demand for service

How to represent geographic space has long been an issue in location modelling. Facilities, demand and/or the region of interest are often abstracted using aggregated points. However, substantial errors can be introduced, and obtained solutions could be dependent on the degree of aggregation. To address this, geographic representation of space is undergoing renewed research interest in spatial analysis and modelling. In this article the maximal coverage problem is studied, with a particular focus on demand coverage representation. Due to the limitations of existing modelling approaches for examining the coverage of space, there exist significant discrepancies between what is modelled and actual geographic coverage. In order to accurately reflect the mechanism of maximal coverage for spatial objects (points, lines or polygons), we introduce a new model explicitly accounting for joint service provided by multiple facilities. The new model can be viewed as an extension of existing approaches, but also a generalisation. An application to warning siren siting is carried out to demonstrate the merits of this new approach.