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USING THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM TO MEASURE THE PROXIMITY BETWEEN TWO SETS OF WEIGHTED POINTS IN A GEOGRAPHICAL SPACE
Author(s) -
Peeters Dominique,
Ruhigira Joseph D.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
papers in regional science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1435-5957
pISSN - 1056-8190
DOI - 10.1111/j.1435-5597.1993.tb01880.x
Subject(s) - measure (data warehouse) , metric (unit) , space (punctuation) , set (abstract data type) , mathematics , metric space , computer science , statistics , data mining , discrete mathematics , economics , operations management , operating system , programming language
Several methods have been proposed in the literature for comparing two distributions of weighted points in a geographical space, but none of them appears perfectly adequate for providing a measure of distance between two sets of weighted points that takes into account these weights, the relative positions and the number of points in each set. This paper shows how a transportation problem built on the two sets of points yields a standardized measure of spatial proximity, whose properties are very close to those of a metric distance. This measure is shown to overcome several drawbacks associated with other methods. Two examples are reported, the first one in facility location analysis and the second in ethnic group location analysis.