O szacowaniu centrum populacji określonego obszaru na przykładzie Polski
On estimating centre of population of a given territory. Poland’s case

Summary/Abstract: Centrographic methods not only serve to carry out demographic analyses or to recognise types of settlement networks, but also they provide such tools that may assist in planning and decision making.The paper deals with a centre of population that is the point to which the whole population of a given territory has the smallest possible sum of distances. The main goal of the paper is to propose an approximate and effective numerical method that leads to determine the centre of population of a given territory. This method relies on a multiple simulation of a start point of the carried optimisation problem. According to this idea, the centre of population of Poland has been determined with reference to the division of Poland into communes or municipalities. An auxiliary goal of the paper is to analyse systems of k centres of population, which is understood as such k points of a territory that the sum of distances, measured from every citizen to his or her closest centre, is minimal.

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