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Track: Application Development Techniques
Jeffrey Knight
TASC, Inc.
12100 Sunset Hills Rd
Reston, VA 22190
Telephone: 703-834-5000 x2592
Fax: 703-318-7900
E-mail: jlknight@tasc.com
Using a GIS To Perform Fractal Analysis of Congressional District Boundaries as an Alternative Measure of Compactness
Defining Issue: Having a compact congressional district is a conventional redistricting goal suggested by many, including the Supreme Court. A spatial compactness measure is often used for assessing the manipulation of electoral boundaries for the purpose of gerrymandering. Unfortunately, no definitive measure is adequate to assess all districts geographic components within a single compact measure. Geographic shape is a difficult concept to express and measure and compactness is no exception. Methodology: Each congressional district of the 103rd Congress will be evaluated with box count fractal analysis and compactness measures using a GIS. The source data were provided by the Census Bureau in ArcInfo format from TIGER data files. This paper will focus on applying fractal analysis as a statistical measurement to investigate the shape characteristics of congressional districts as compared to conventional compactness measures. Fractal analysis and measurement provide additional insight into the
spatial nature of voting districts as they relate to compactness and gerrymandering. Software: The analysis was performed using ArcInfo and ARCGRID functionality driven by AMLs. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the potential advantages of applying fractal analysis through a GIS environment.
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