Arbitrary distance function estimation using vector quantization

In this paper we shall utilize the concepts of vector quantization (VQ) for the computation of arbitrary distance functions-a problem which has been receiving much attention in the operations research and location analysis community. The input to our problem is the set of coordinates of a large number of nodes whose inter-node arbitrary “distances” have to be estimated. Unlike traditional operations research methods, which use parametric functional estimators, we have utilized VQ principles to first adaptively polarize the nodes into sub-regions according to Kohonen´s self-organizing map. Subsequently, the parameters characterizing the sub-regions are learnt by using a variety of methods