In a framework with two parties, deterministic voter preferences and a type of geographical constraints, we propose a set of simple axioms and show that they jointly characterize the districting rule that maximizes the number of districts one party can win, given the distribution of individual votes (the " optimal gerrymandering rule "). As a corollary, we obtain that no districting rule can sa...

Due to a variety of political, economic, and technological factors, many national electricity industries around the globe are transforming from non-competitive monopolies with centralized systems to decentralized operations with competitive business units. This process, commonly referred to as deregulation (or liberalization) is driven by the belief that a monopolistic industry fails to achieve...

2 Districting Principles and Democratic Representation

Partisan gerrymandering poses a threat to democracy. Moreover, the complexity of the districting task may exceed human capacities. One potential solution is using computational models to automate the districting process by optimising objective and open criteria, such as how spatially compact districts are. We formulated one such model that minimised pairwise distance between voters within a dis...

Districting problems are of high importance in many different fields. Multiple criteria models seem a more adequate representation of districting problems in real-world situations. Real-life decision situations are by their very nature multidimensional. This paper deals with the problem of partitioning a territory into “homogeneous” zones. Each zone is composed of a set of elementary territoria...

We show that even when voters’ preferences are deterministic and known optimal partisan redistricting is not generally obtained by concentrating opponent’s supporters in “unwinnable” districts (“packing”) and spreading one’s own supporters evenly among the other districts in order to produce many slight marginal wins (“cracking”). More generally, we prove that for districting problems with geog...

Abstract Objectives The Police Districting Problem concerns the definition of patrol districts that distribute police resources in a territory such way high-risk areas receive more patrolling time than low-risk areas, according to principle territorial fairness. This results configurations are efficient and effective at controlling crime but that, same time, might exacerbate racial disparity st...

Planning of efficient emergency response systems is of critical nature to modern societies, especially in densely populated areas where incidents are more likely to occur. In this paper, a model is developed for optimizing the location of an emergency response system, taking into account the stochastic nature of the network served. The model examines the problems of districting and dispatching ...