A tabu search heuristic and adaptive memory procedure for political districting

Abstract

In political districting problems, the aim is to partition a territory into electoral constituencies, subject to some side constraints. The most common side constraints include contiguity, population equality, compactness, and socio-economic homogeneity. We propose a formulation in which the various constraints are integrated into a single multicriteria function. We solve the problem by means of a tabu search and adaptive memory heuristic. The procedure is illustrated on real data from the city of Edmonton.