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

在十年一次的人口普查之后，每十年进行一次选区重新划分。理想情况下，由此产生的地区是为了给每个公民提供公平的代表性。然而，在目前的制度下，重新划分选区的过程容易受到操纵。虽然这一进程将始终涉及党派和有关各方，但一个免费和广泛使用的计算工具将使这一进程更加透明，并将使更广泛的公民参与。这种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的计划时使用。长期目标是在评估重划计划时考虑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。作为一个为期一年的小型探索性赠款，这项工作将限于将重新划分问题作为一个离散优化问题来制定，这对更广泛的项目的进一步进展至关重要。智力MeritThe本研究的结果将提供一个定量的工具，比较，评估和创建重新划分计划，旨在优化指定的#64257;艾德标准。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被用来识别以前看不见或忽略的重新划分过程的见解，并识别选区划分;否则这些目标将是不可行的。一个跨学科的团队将承担，包括政治学家，计算机科学家和数学家。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选区重划进程，办法是提供一个广泛使用的客观工具，使选区重划进程开放，让更广泛、更多样化的利益攸关方群体参与。这样的网络融合将产生明显的教育影响，因为K？12名学生将能够可视化重新划分过程，为他们提供更丰富的民主理解，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.