A geographic optimization approach to coast guard ship basing

• Main Author: Gençay, Mehmet Ali
• Other Authors: Szechtman, Roberto
• Published: Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School 2015
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10945/45860

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited === This thesis studies the problem of finding efficient ship base locations, area of operations (AO) among bases, and ship assignments for a coast guard (CG) organization. This problem is faced by many CGs around the world and is motivated by the need to optimize operational outcomes in the face of budget constraints. There is a need for a tool to optimize the placement of the available number of ships to candidate bases and the assignment of the AOs for each base. In this thesis, we developed a model that takes the objective of minimizing the weighted demand for CG services. We also used constraints to have proportionate AOs to the number of ships on each base and partition constraints. To the best of our knowledge, until now, there has yet to be a tool designed for finding both ship allocations and AOs for each base. Therefore, developing this tool is a huge step forward in this area.