Intuitionistic Fuzzy Hub Location Problems: Model and Solution Approach

One of the most important problems in network design applications is the hub location problem, which is an extension of the facility location problem. The purpose of the problem is to select the least hub nodes from the available nodes so by establishing faster connections between hub nodes, the cost of transferring the entire network traffic is minimised. To deal with uncertainty and hesitation, the traffic amount between origin and destination nodes, the transfer cost, and the cost of establishing hub nodes are considered to be trapezoidal intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. The problem is formulated, and a new approach and a linearisation technique are shown to transform the Intuitionistic Fuzzy Hub Location Problem into a classical one. The transformed problem is solved using integer linear programming algorithms. The feasibility and efficiency of the obtained solutions applied to some airline passenger distribution problem applications are illustrated.