OPTIMIZATION OF LOCATION OF TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS CENTERS AT THE EXAMPLE OF THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

Transport links largely determine the potential of a country located within the Asian region to interact with market entities beyond region’s borders. Meanwhile, transportation logistics of individual regions, territories, and countries is a complex integrated problem, whose solution is based on the approaches to fundamentals of organisation of the operation of transport infrastructure.
One of the key tasks in organizing the work of the transport system of the Republic of Kazakhstan is to determine the location of the elements of its transport and logistics infrastructure. At present, theoretical and methodological approaches to solving this problem can be divided into multicriteria analysis and coordinate (gravitational method) approach.
The objective of this article is to analyze the possibility of using gravitational and multicriteria methods to find the optimal location for transport and logistics centers using the example of the Republic of Kazakhstan. 
Based on that the research was intended as an attempt to find optimal location of transport and logistics centers in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It was clearly shown that the use of the gravitational method has constraints if not supplemented by the use of the multicriteria analysis method when solving the problem of choosing the optimal location of the transport and logistics infrastructure at the example of the Republic of Kazakhstan.