Problems concerning the location of facilities are frequent in territorial management and planning at various
scales, from the inspection on the ideal combined location for a network of hospitals at the national level to the
best location of shops or waste collecting bins within a municipality. Mathematical models can be used to
represent such spatial problems in the planning context, together with a wide range of methodologies to solve
them, but sometimes due to unawareness, unavailability or operative difficulties, this field has not been explored
to the full extent of its applicability. On the other hand, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used
programs that enable multiple types of analysis for an extensive range of spatial problems, but, generically, do not
have the ability to provide solutions for location problems.
In this work a module to solve point facility location problems operating on a GIS package is presented. The
issues on the integration of the models and solution methodologies for location problems in a GIS are focused.
This module has the particularity of being usable not just by experts on location problems but by all GIS users.
In a first section, the various models for point location problems considered in the work are presented. The used
heuristic methodologies for solving the referred problems are also discussed: some are collected from the
literature without changes, while others were improved from known algorithms. A questionnaire was developed
and included in the module, allowing users to identify the type of problem they are interested in. In the last part,
an application example displays a complete session with the implemented module.