Intertemporal and Spacial Location of Disposal Facilities

Optimal capacity and location of a sequence of landfills are studied, and the interactions between both decisions are pointed out. The decision capacity has some spatial implications, because it affects the feasible region for the rest of landfills, and some temporal implications, because the capacity determines the lifetime of the landfill and, hence, the instant of time where next landfills will need to be constructed. Some general mathematical properties of the solution are provided and interpreted from an economic point of view. The resulting problem turns out to be no convex and, therefore, it can not be solved by conventional optimization techniques. Some global optimization methods are used to solve the problem in a particular case, in order to illustrate the behavior of the solution depending on parameter values.