GENETIC ALGORITHMIC APPLIED TO THE MAXIMUM COVERAGE CAPACITATED FACILITY LOCATION PROBLEM WITH RANGE CONSTRAINED DRONES

This paper addresses the problem of Location of Maximum Coverage Capable Facilities with Limited Range Drones (MCFLPD). Considering n customers with demands, m candidate locations for installations and a set of drones, the objective is to determine p locations for launching drones and distributing resources, maximizing coverage. Due to the high computational complexity of MCFLPD, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) with constructive heuristics inspired by the GRASP metaheuristic is proposed for the initial population. The GA was tested with literature data and compared with heuristics and an integer linear programming mathematical model, presenting very satisfactory results. Several scenarios were analyzed to assess the importance of the number of drones and the number of capable facilities.