Reliable Hub Location Problems and Network Design

The hub and spoke network is a critical network topology that is widely applied in current transportation and telecommunications systems, including Internets, air transportation networks and highway systems. This main idea of hub location models is to construct a network system which achieves the economy of scale of flows. The main purpose of this study is to introduce new hub location problems that take into account network reliability. Two standard models based on assignment schemes are proposed, and a minimum threshold model is provided as an extension in terms of hub network design. The reliability and interaction potentials of 15 nodes in the U.S. are used to examine model behaviors. According to the type of models and reliability, hubs, and minimum threshold levels, relationships among the flow economy of scale, network costs, and network resiliency are analyzed.