A Novel Method to Structure the World in Population Entities and Application to European Countries and Regions

A novel method is presented to describe population entities. It consists of 2 steps. First the structure of a population entity is described in terms of sub entities using a logarithmic distribution. This allows the uniform description of the World in continents, continents in countries, countries in provinces, provinces in cities, etc. Secondly the logarithmic distribution is simplified. This reveals the main structural differences and similarities at a certain level (countries in terms of provinces for example) and opens a window to study scale effects (comparing the description a province in cities and the world in terms of countries for example). The novel method is applied to the description of the European countries in terms of regions. The results are commented, focussing on the differences and similarities between Southern, Middle and Northern Europe.