Water Cycle Algorithm for Solving Continuous P-Median Problem

The p-median problem can be applied in various fields, especially in operational research and supply chain management. Due to the fact that is widely used, numerous different definitions of the p-median problem can be found. Continuous, capacitated, discrete and other p-median problems are NP-hard optimization problems. In this paper water cycle algorithm was proposed for tackling continuous capacitated p-median problem. The proposed method is tested on 5 standard benchmark and 6 real world datasets. Quality of the proposed water cycle algorithm is proved by comparing it with other methods from the literature. Based on the obtained results it can be concluded that the proposed method is effective for finding the optimal solution for continuous p-median problem.