The Political Districting Problem is to partition a zone into several electoral districts subject to some constraints such as contiguity, population equality, etc. In this paper, we apply statistical physics methods to Political Districting Problem. This political problem is mapped to a q-state Potts model system, and the political constraints are written in the form of an energy function with the interactions between sites or external fields acting on the system. Districting into q voter districts is equivalent to finding the ground state of this q-state Potts model. We illustrate this problem by districting Taipei city and compare it to a computer-generated artificial system.
關聯:
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MODERN PHYSICS B Volume: 21 Issue: 23-24 Pages: 3975-3980
