• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.423-437
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• 2014

Districting is a spatial decision making process to make a new regional framework for affecting human activities. Natural barriers such as rivers and mountains located within a reorganized district may reduce the efficiency of reorganized human activities. This implies that it is necessary to consider boundary characteristics in a districting process. The purpose of this research is to develop a new spatial optimization model based on boundary characteristics for districting problems. The boundary characteristics are evaluated as continuous value expressing the possibility of combining adjacent two basic spatial units rather than a dichotomous value with 1 or 0 and are defined as an objective function in the model. In addition, the model has explicitly formulated contiguity constraints as well as constraints enforcing demand balance among districts such as population and area. The boundary attributes are categorized into physical and relational characteristics. Suitability analysis is used to combine various variables related to each boundary characteristic and to evaluate the coupling possibility between two neighboring basic units. The model is applied to an administrative redistricting problem. The analytical results demonstrate that various boundary characteristics could be modeled in terms of mixed integer programming (MIP).

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.813-832
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• 2009

As accessibility to health-care service in less populated rural areas is geographically limited and demand for public health-care by the aging is increasing, a new approach for health-care service such as a home care service is becoming more popular. For a home care service, health-care personnels directly visit to location of health-care clients. Such changes in provision of health services require developing innovative and scientific approaches for efficient allocation of health resources and managing services by public health-care organizations. The purpose of this study is to formulate a location model for visiting health-care districting for the rural elderly and to develop an Automated Zoning Procedure (AZP) to solve this model. Mobility, workload balance and contiguity criteria are considered in the model. Three different objective functions are evaluated; 1) minimizing the sum of network distance between the unit areas in a district, 2) maximizing spatial interaction between the unit areas in a district, and 3) minimizing tour distance that visits each unit area exactly once in a district. The AZP for solving the model is developed and applied to a rural area. The application results demonstrate that the AZP can generate different districting systems for each objective functions.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.673-688
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to develop an optimization model for reconstructing local administrative districts using spatial analysis and modeling. For this, literature related to reorganization of local administrative systems was critically reviewed and criteria for redistricting were extracted. An optimization model for reconstructing administrative districts was formulated based on these criteria. The model considered three criteria; homogeneity within a reconstructed district, equity among reconstructed districts, and spatial arrangement. Homogeneity for relieving spatial mismatch between administrative and living(economic) boundaries is measured by spatial interaction within a district. Equity among districts is evaluated using population, area, and financial independence. Finally, spatial arrangement is measured by compactness and contiguity. The developed optimization model was implemented using Automated Zoning Procedure(AZP) in GIS environment and applied to a problem aggregating Si-Gun administrative units into broader districts. Application results demonstrate that the model can provide optimal districts according to alternative objective functions.