The Bioterrorism Treatment Facility Design Problem - You have been asked to propose a design for a system of treatment facilities for the U.S. National Security Agency in event of a bioterrorism attack. Your design should consider only the continental 48 states (omit Hawaii and Alaska from your analysis).

The ABSOLUTE design requirements are as follows: A) Each state must have a bioterrorism treatment facility (BTF for short) either located in the state itself or in a neighboring state. B) We are not concerned with exact location within a state. C) We are not concerned with average distance between neighboring states, the number of shared borders, etc. Thus, this is just a high-level design. D) A state either has a BTF located in its borders, or it doesn't ... you cannot locate more than 1 BTF in any one state.

Each state is defined by the following items (provided in separate files): a) Neighboring states (including itself) - BTF coverage data. b) Political affiliate based on sitting governor. c) Population (in millions). d) Does it border Canada? (Geographic border by definition).

Phase 0: Determine the best way to locate BTF's that minimize the total state population of BTF locations and meet design requirement A above.

Phase 1: Determine the best way to locate BTF's that minimize the total state population of BTF locations, meet design requirement A above, and meet the following requirements as well: a) The President Political Power Privilege - At least 55% of BTF's must be located where the sitting governor is from the XYZ party. So, if we need 20 BTF's, there must be at least 11 states represented from XYZ party. The state's affiliated with XYZ party are notated on the spreadsheet. b) BTF locations can include no more than 2 states that border Canada. c) BTF locations must include at least 2 states whose population is greater than or equal to 10 million. d) States cannot be covered by more than 2 BTF's. That can be a BTF located in that state and one other neighboring state, or when there isn't a BTF located in that state, 2 different neighboring states. So this is an upper bound of coverage as defined in design requirement A.

Compare and contrast Phase 0 vs Phase 1 solutions (maybe on the basis of the objective and the 4 stated constraints). A simple map of BTF locations would be helpful. This will help you see if the solution passes the smell test as well.