Hierarchical Facility Location and Hub Network Problems: A literature review

This paper presents a complete review of published researches about hierarchical facility location and hub network problems. In hierarchical network facilities with different service levels, we are with a top-down or down-top manner interaction. In Hierarchical systems, service levels are composed of different facilities. In this paper, published papers from 1970 to 2015 are studied and a comprehensively classification is presented. Mathematical models are classified based on different properties such as: input, output, objective functions, constraints, applications, some of the real world case studies and solution methods. Finally, according to proposed classification, conclusion and future research to tackle real world hierarchical facility location problems and hierarchical hub network problems is presented. This study can be used as a comprehensive reference in the hierarchical facility location problems, particularly those based on hub networks.