Ioannis Giannikos (University of Patras, Greece)  

Short Biography  

Ioannis Giannikos is an Assistant Professor of Operational Research at the Department of Business Administration of the University of Patras , Greece . He received his B.Sc. in Applied Informatics in 1989 from the Athens University of Economics and Business, his M.Sc. in 1990 and his Ph.D. in 1993, both from the London School of Economics. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate students in various Universities, including the London School of Economics, the London Business School , the Athens University of Economics and Business and the University of Piraeus .  He has published several papers in many international scientific journals mostly in the area of location analysis. He is a member of the British and Hellenic OR Societies as well as INFORMS. His current research interests include the development of models and solution techniques for location problems and the combination of mathematical programming and Geographical Information Systems for strategic decision-making.

Lecture to be presented in EWI 2007

Title

GIS and Location Analysis

Abstract

It is well known that modern Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are capable of capturing, storing, analysing and representing a wide range of geographically referenced information, i.e. data related to location. As a result of their advanced computational processing capabilities, GIS have become a valuable tool in Location Analysis. In this paper we discuss how location analysts can exploit a whole armoury of GIS functions such as the integration of multiple data layers into a common co-ordinate system, the aggregation of spatial units, the specification of spatial queries and the visualization of data and model results. We illustrate these functions through some classic problems in Location Analysis such as the p-median or the p-center problem and also the problem of minimizing representation error in demand aggregation models.
Apart from these applications, GIS offer the possibility to develop new, more realistic models that can better represent complex situations. We will discuss how some well known location models can be viewed from a totally different perspective and show how these models can be extended by means of GIS in order to obtain better solutions.

Key words: Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Location Modeling

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