IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirb/v39y2012i2p376-392.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Spatial Aggregation and Compactness of Census Areas with a Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm: A Case Study in Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Dilip Datta

    (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tezpur University, Napaam, Tezpur 784028, India)

  • Jacek Malczewski

    (Department of Geography, Social Science Centre, University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond Street, London, Ontario, N6A 5C2, Canada)

  • José Rui Figueira

    (CEG-IST, Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal (also Associate Researcher at LORIA Laboratory, Nancy, France))

Abstract

The paper focuses on a case study of delineating census tracts (CTs) in the Census Metropolitan area of London, Ontario, Canada. The procedure for defining the actual pattern of CTs by a local committee and Statistics Canada has involved such consideration as the compactness of CTs and their population-based and area-based uniformity as well as some subjective aspects. The actual pattern shows that compactness of CTs has been achieved at the expense of uniformity in population and areal sizes. The paper proposes an integer-coded multiobjective genetic algorithm for aggregating census units with the expectation of obtaining a higher level of compactness and population/area uniformity of CTs through an optimization technique. Square-shape and circular-shape compactness of CTs are examined under different scenarios. The results indicate that the proposed genetic algorithm can provide solutions that are considerably better in terms of the Pareto-optimality principle than the actual pattern of CTs.

Suggested Citation

  • Dilip Datta & Jacek Malczewski & José Rui Figueira, 2012. "Spatial Aggregation and Compactness of Census Areas with a Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm: A Case Study in Canada," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 39(2), pages 376-392, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:39:y:2012:i:2:p:376-392
    DOI: 10.1068/b38078
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/b38078
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/b38078?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bozkaya, Burcin & Erkut, Erhan & Laporte, Gilbert, 2003. "A tabu search heuristic and adaptive memory procedure for political districting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 12-26, January.
    2. Fernando Tavares-Pereira & José Figueira & Vincent Mousseau & Bernard Roy, 2007. "Multiple criteria districting problems," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 69-92, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rui Fragoso & Conceição Rego & Vladimir Bushenkov, 2016. "Clustering of Territorial Areas: A Multi-Criteria Districting Problem," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 14(2), pages 179-198, December.
    2. Steiner, Maria Teresinha Arns & Datta, Dilip & Steiner Neto, Pedro José & Scarpin, Cassius Tadeu & Rui Figueira, José, 2015. "Multi-objective optimization in partitioning the healthcare system of Parana State in Brazil," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 53-64.
    3. Douglas M. King & Sheldon H. Jacobson & Edward C. Sewell & Wendy K. Tam Cho, 2012. "Geo-Graphs: An Efficient Model for Enforcing Contiguity and Hole Constraints in Planar Graph Partitioning," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1213-1228, October.
    4. Antonio Diglio & Stefan Nickel & Francisco Saldanha-da-Gama, 2020. "Towards a stochastic programming modeling framework for districting," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 292(1), pages 249-285, September.
    5. Juan A. Díaz & Dolores E. Luna, 2017. "Primal and dual bounds for the vertex p-median problem with balance constraints," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 258(2), pages 613-638, November.
    6. Sebastián Moreno & Jordi Pereira & Wilfredo Yushimito, 2020. "A hybrid K-means and integer programming method for commercial territory design: a case study in meat distribution," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 286(1), pages 87-117, March.
    7. Maria da Conceição Rego & Rui Fragoso & Vladimir Bushenkov, 2014. "Clustering of Territorial Areas: A Multi-Criteria Districting Problem," ERSA conference papers ersa14p218, European Regional Science Association.
    8. Karsu, Özlem & Morton, Alec, 2015. "Inequity averse optimization in operational research," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 245(2), pages 343-359.
    9. Ivorra, Benjamin & Mohammadi, Bijan & Manuel Ramos, Angel, 2015. "A multi-layer line search method to improve the initialization of optimization algorithms," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 247(3), pages 711-720.
    10. Amy Cohn & Michael Magazine & George Polak, 2009. "Rank‐Cluster‐and‐Prune: An algorithm for generating clusters in complex set partitioning problems," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 215-225, April.
    11. Xin Tang & Ameur Soukhal & Vincent T’kindt, 2014. "Preprocessing for a map sectorization problem by means of mathematical programming," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 222(1), pages 551-569, November.
    12. Carlos García-Alonso & Leonor Pérez-Naranjo & Juan Fernández-Caballero, 2014. "Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms to identify highly autocorrelated areas: the case of spatial distribution in financially compromised farms," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 219(1), pages 187-202, August.
    13. Scheuerer, Stephan & Wendolsky, Rolf, 2006. "A scatter search heuristic for the capacitated clustering problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 169(2), pages 533-547, March.
    14. Jörg Kalcsics & Stefan Nickel & Michael Schröder, 2005. "Towards a unified territorial design approach — Applications, algorithms and GIS integration," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, June.
    15. Baghersad, Milad & Emadikhiav, Mohsen & Huang, C. Derrick & Behara, Ravi S., 2023. "Modularity maximization to design contiguous policy zones for pandemic response," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(1), pages 99-112.
    16. Haugland, Dag & Ho, Sin C. & Laporte, Gilbert, 2007. "Designing delivery districts for the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 180(3), pages 997-1010, August.
    17. Alexander Butsch & Jörg Kalcsics & Gilbert Laporte, 2014. "Districting for Arc Routing," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 809-824, November.
    18. Anna Franceschetti & Ola Jabali & Gilbert Laporte, 2017. "Continuous approximation models in freight distribution management," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 25(3), pages 413-433, October.
    19. Balázs Fleiner & Balázs Nagy & Attila Tasnádi, 2017. "Optimal partisan districting on planar geographies," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 25(4), pages 879-888, December.
    20. Burcin Bozkaya & Erhan Erkut & Dan Haight & Gilbert Laporte, 2011. "Designing New Electoral Districts for the City of Edmonton," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 41(6), pages 534-547, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:39:y:2012:i:2:p:376-392. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.