A Mathematical Model to Select the Best Location for a New Commercial Bank Branch

H.A.D.N.C Seneviratne, P.J.Paranamana

Department of mathematics, University of Colombo.

Abstract
Location selection plays a vital role in the process of decision making of a commercial establishment
which basically depends on its mission and strategy. Objective of this research is to build a model to
support the decision of selecting most suitable location to open a new branch for a commercial bank
in SriLanka. Four districts and two district secretariat divisions from each district are chosen. This is
a multi-criteria decision making problem (MCDM).The decision criteria consists of eight main
factors Demography, Facilities, Socio-Economy, Sectoral Employment, Trade Potential, Banking &
Finance, Geography, Safety & Security and further decomposed into sub factors. Since this practical
problem of decision making contains fuzziness, fuzzy AHP is used to compare the criteria and
prioritize them and then the alternatives are ranked by the TOPSIS method.