Arrangements of U. S. Population by Urban and Rural Geometrical Clusters.
Abstract
The paper describes a hierarchical structuring of the US population based on aggregations of natural clusters of people into units called nodes. The components of the hierarchical structure are termed the 'national nodal network' and 'multinodal complexes.' These two components provide useful data for personnel movement studies as well as national population and areal data for damage assessment models. The general approach was to aggregate groups of urban and rural census tracts at the city and county levels according to a set of rules that mathematically constrained them into ellipsoidal or circular Gaussian configurations weighted by population. The study indicated that there are relatively few major metropolitan areas where the more complicated interlocking structure of a multinodal complex is necessary. Thus, for many purposes a considerable simplification is possible in the way most of the area of a county can be described. The completed structures provide a method for adding additional physical, economic, or social features to extend their usefulness. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1970
- Accession Number
- AD0717552
Entities
People
- Dietrich L. Petersen
- Leo A. Schmidt Jr.
Organizations
- Institute for Defense Analyses