SGER-III-CXT: A Computational Appraoch to Zoning Analysis

描述在十年一次的人口普查之后，每10年重新划分一次选区。理想情况下，所产生的选区是为了为每个公民提供公平的代表。然而，在目前的制度下，重新划分选区的过程一直是可以操纵的。尽管这一过程总是涉及党派和感兴趣的各方，但一个免费且可广泛使用的计算工具，可以访问所有相关数据，并使用户能够探索可能的重划选区计划，将使这一过程更加透明，并将吸引更多的公民。这样的工具还可以为州代表和决策者提供一个论坛，供他们在讨论和谈判重新划分选区计划时使用。长期目标是在评估重新划分选区计划时考虑到多个目标和参数权重；可以根据所有这些标准对计划进行比较。作为一项为期一年的小额试探性赠款，这项工作将限于将重新划分选区问题作为一个离散的优化问题来表述，这对于在更广泛的项目上取得进一步进展至关重要。智力价值这项研究的结果将为比较、评估和创建旨在优化特定标准的重新划分计划提供一个量化工具。在这个数学公式中，来自计算复杂性理论和离散优化的强大工具可以用来识别以前未见或忽略的对重新划分选区过程的见解，并识别不公正的选区划分；否则，这些目标将是不可行的。将派出一个跨学科的团队，其中包括一名政治学家、一名计算机科学家和一名数学家。更广泛的影响从长远来看，为重新划分选区而开发的网络环境将对公共政策、研究和教育产生重大影响。在公共政策方面，有可能从根本上改变重新划分选区的进程，方法是提供一个广泛可用的客观工具，使重新划分选区的进程开放给更广泛和更多样化的利益攸关方群体参与。这样的网络环境将产生明显的教育影响，因为K-12学生将能够想象重新划分选区的过程，使他们对民主有更丰富的理解，并允许他们在计算的背景下接近社会科学。

DescriptionRedistricting occurs every 10 years following the decennial census. Ideally, the resulting districts are created to provide fair representation for each citizen. In the current system, however, the redistricting process has been open to manipulation. Although the process will always involve partisan and interested parties, a free and widely accessible computational tool that provides access to all relevant data and enables users to explore the universe of possible redistricting plans would make the process more transparent and would engage a broader array of citizens. Such a tool could also provide a forum for state representatives and decision-makers to use when discussing and negotiating redistricting plans. The long-term goal is to allow for the consideration of multiple objectives and parameter weights when evaluating redistricting plans; plans can be compared based on all these criteria. As a small exploratory grant with a one year life, the work will be limited to the formulation of the redistricting problem as a discrete optimization problem, which is essential to further progress on the broader project. Intellectual MeritThe results of this research will provide a quantitative tool for comparing, evaluating, and creating redistricting plans intended to optimize specified criteria. In this mathematical formulation, powerful tools from computational complexity theory and discrete optimization can be adapted to identify previously unseen or ignored insights into the redistricting process and to identify gerrymanders; these goals would be infeasible otherwise. A cross-disciplinary team will be brought to bear, including a political scientist, a computer scientist, and a mathematician. Broader ImpactIn the long term, a cyberenvironment developed for redistricting will have a significant impact on public policy, research, and education. In public policy, there is the potential to fundamentally transform the redistricting process by providing a widely accessible objective tool to open the redistricting process to participation by a broader and more diverse group of interested stakeholders. Such a cyberenvironment will have a clear educational impact, as K?12 students will be able to visualize the redistricting process, providing them with a richer understanding of democracy and allowing them to approach social science in the context of computation.