INTERFACES, vol.46, no.4, pp.297-314, 2016 (SCI-Expanded)
A typical coast guard has complex responsibilities, subject to its multiple missions in maritime jurisdiction regions. These maritime jurisdiction regions can be partitioned into responsibility areas, and each type of coast guard vessel has a set of attributes for each responsibility area. The distribution of coast guard assets deployed in their respective areas of responsibility should be linked to the types of events occurring in these areas. The objective of this study is to determine the appropriate distribution of coast guard assets in various maritime zones; we do this by evaluating models that assign coast guard surface vessel types to missions in these maritime zones. We use the analytic network process model to compare various vessel types and determine the task-type weights for each vessel type. Weighted goal programming allows us to combine data, including the weights we derive from the use of other decision-aid tools. Our objective is to determine the best compromise solution for distributing coast guard assets into four main responsibility zones. The Turkish Coast Guard implemented the model in 2014, and decided to use it once a year prior to executing the main process in which it allocates coast guard assets.