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autoBound for Political Redistricting
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Product Description:
Autobound is a GIS-based system for redistricting, reapportionment, and resource allocation. The system is designed to create balanced regions using input either from point data, such as incidents or calls for service, or from polygons depicting census blocks, planning areas, or other user-specific boundaries. autoBound is built on top of Arcview desktop GIS from Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). Arcview GIS is the leading desktop GIS for the Windows 95/98/NT and Unix environments.The system provides the ability for both an automated and a manual redistricting process. The automated redistricting process creates balanced districts, which take into account physical features as well as political boundaries. For example, a police department creating new beats can avoid beat configurations with potential accessibility problems by identifying a major river as a physical barrier. Likewise, a school district interested in balancing students to available school resources would avoid splitting communities between schools by identifying each community as a political boundary. The redistricting engine adheres to user-defined parameters when boundaries are established.
The manual editing facilities provide multiple selection modes with dynamically updated bar graphs depicting the total values for each district. Using the system, districts can be generated using the automated engine then refined using the manual edit process.
Finally, autoBound allows an organization to evaluate multiple boundary configurations in less time than it normally would take to formulate one plan.
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Sample district total before and after redistricting with autoBound
