Location Allocation chooses which candidate sites to open and assigns demand to them, based on real travel times. Use it to decide where to open stores, depots, clinics or offices, or which ones to keep.
If you’ve used Esri’s location-allocation tool, this works the same way and covers the same seven problem types, with three differences:
Every transport mode, including public transport, using TravelTime travel times.
No network dataset to set up or maintain.
No ArcGIS credits used.
What you need
Facilities: a point layer of the sites to choose from. These can be candidates, sites that must stay open, or competitors (set with the Facility Role Field; blank means candidate).
Demand Points: a point layer of where demand is, such as customers, population centroids or delivery stops. Use the Demand Weight Field for population, spend or another weight (blank counts each point as 1).
Run it
Open Location Allocation from the Location Analytics toolset of the TravelTime toolbox.
Choose your Facilities and Demand Points layers and their ID fields.
Set the Travel Mode, whether journeys are departing or arriving, and the time. Departure means journeys leave the facilities for the demand points; arrival means they leave the demand points for the facilities.
Set the Travel time (in minutes), up to 240. A demand point further than this from a facility can’t be served by it.
Choose a Problem Type (below) and, if it uses one, how many Facilities To Choose. Inputs the problem type doesn’t use are greyed out.
Run the tool.
Problem types
Problem type | Use it to | Example |
Minimize impedance (p-median) | Keep total travel time as low as possible | Where to put 5 depots so deliveries are quickest overall |
Maximize coverage | Reach as much demand as possible within the travel time | Which 3 clinics put the most people within 30 minutes |
Maximize capacitated coverage | As above, without any site going over its capacity | Schools with a fixed number of places |
Maximize coverage, minimize facilities | Use the fewest sites to cover everything the candidates can | The fewest fire stations to cover an area |
Maximize attendance | Get the most visits, when nearer people are more likely to come | Leisure centres or libraries |
Maximize market share | Win the most demand against competitors | Where to open stores in a competitive market |
Target market share | Use the fewest sites to reach a target share | The fewest stores needed for 40% of the market |
The default is Minimize impedance. Market share problems use the Facility Attractiveness Field; capacitated coverage uses the Facility Capacity Field (or Default Capacity). Impedance Transformation controls how heavily longer journeys are penalised.
The results
The tool creates three outputs in your geodatabase:
Allocation lines: a straight line from each demand point to the facility serving it, with the travel time and weight allocated. These show the allocation, not the route taken.
Demand points: every demand point, with the facility it’s allocated to and
allocated(1 if served, 0 if not).Facility table: one row per chosen facility, with how many demand points it serves, the total weight and, for capacitated problems, how much of its capacity is used.
In market share problems, a demand point can be split between several facilities. The lines show the full split, and the demand point layer shows the facility with the largest share.
Things to know
If the travel time search for any facility fails, the whole run stops, even with Robust Mode on. Check every facility is on land that can be reached.
The tool works out the best answer it can by testing swaps between sites, so it isn’t guaranteed to find the single best solution. The same inputs always give the same result. Full details of the optimisation can be found in the Solver overview.
The tool has no search range, because it needs exactly one travel time for each facility and demand point.
Full parameter details are in the Location Allocation docs.