Delimitation of Functional Regions Using a p-Regions Problem Approach

Abstract

Various spatial data analyses have been used for the identification of functional regions. Functional regions are identified by grouping many areal units into fewer clusters to classify the areal units in terms of similar properties, as well as to constrain the spatial contiguity of the areal units in each cluster. This article proposes a spatial optimization model, called the p-functional regions problem, to solve a regionalization problem by considering geographic flows. The magnitude of geographic flows, such as journey-to-work, is widely considered a good indicator of functional relationships between areas so that regionalization models incorporating various criteria, such as the maximum intraregion flows or the total inflows from other units, may be used to identify the p regions. We also propose an analytical target reduction approach to enhance the model tractability in generating optimal solutions to large problems and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the optimization model using journey-to-work data from Seoul (South Korea) and South Carolina (the United States).