Method of Minimum Distance - A GIS Anchored System for Selection of Utility Service Stations

In this paper a GIS [4, 5, 6] anchored system has been proposed, enable to suggest the suitable locations for constructing the utility service stations. The information regarding the population of the customers in different wards/areas is fed through GUI in a digitized map [1], generally of a large region and to increase the portability of the system the information are kept using flat-file system. The technique takes as input the number of desired utility service stations to be constructed and then forms cluster of the adjacent wards/areas using the k-means method of clustering, under the condition that population of each cluster must be approximately equal. The proposed location of the utility service station and the areas covered up by any station are displayed graphically onto the map. The motivation behind selecting the location is that, the allotment of the customers to any service station should be done in a uniform way or in other words none of the customer should travel long to reach service station.