Hierarchical Facility Location and Hub Network Problems: A literature review

In this paper, a complete review of published researches about hierarchical facility location and hub network problems is presented. Hierarchical network is a system where facilities with different service levels interact in a top-down way or vice versa. In Hierarchical systems, service levels are composed of different facilities. Published papers from (1970) to (2015) have been studied and a comprehensively classified and surveys 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. At the ends, according to classification, a conclusion based on the literature and the future research to tackle real world of hierarchical facility location problems and hierarchical hub network problems is presented. This study may be used as a comprehensive reference for researchers in the hierarchical facility location problems, particularly those of hierarchical location-based on hub networks.