Artificial Intelligence in Industry 4.0 and 5G Technology

8Application of Integer Programming in Allocating Energy Resources in Rural Africa

Elias Munapo

Department of Statistics and Operations Research, School of Economic Sciences, North West University, Mahikeng, South Africa

8.1 Introduction

The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) can be defined as the problem whereby a set of facilities are allocated to a set of locations in such a way that the cost is a function of the distance and flow between the facilities. In this problem, the costs are associated with a facility being placed at a certain location. The objective is to minimize the assignment of each facility to a location. To date, the QAP has been believed to be very difficult, and heuristics were believed to be the methods of choice as given in Munapo [1]. Various heuristics have been developed, for example, Hahn and Grant [2], Ramakrishnan et al. [3], and Drezner [4]. For more developments in solving QAP, you may see Mohamed et al. [5], Adams and Johnson [6], Cela [7], Nagarajan and Sviridenko [8], Rego et al. [9], Xia [10] and Yang et al. [11].

8.1.1 Applications of the QAP

In addition to allocating resources and having importance in decision fame work, the QAP can also be used in numerical analysis, dartboard construction, archaeology, statistical analysis, reaction chemistry, economic problem modeling, hospital lay‐out, backboard wiring problem, and campus planning model. These are briefly explained as follows.

• Numerical analysis. The QAP can be used to generate initial ...