Locating the Economic and other Performance Centres of Asia using Geodetic Coordinates, Haversine Formula and Weiszfeld’s Algorithm

Abstract

Due to the increasing economic activities in Asia, the Global Economic Centre is moving towards China from the Atlantic Ocean. According to the “Global Growth Generators, Citi Investment Research and Analysis, 2011” report, in the year 2050, India will become the world’s largest economy (GDP: 85.97 trillion USD) closely followed by China (GDP: 80.02 trillion USD). US may slip to the third position with a GDP of 39.07 trillion USD followed by Indonesia (13.93 trillion USD). Japan may be at a distant ninth position with 6.48 trillion USD. The objective of this paper is to locate the performance centres of Asia that include the “Economic Centre” and “Population Centre” for the years 2005, 2010 and 2018. These centres will provide some idea about the concentration of the population and economic activities at a particular point of time. Identifying such Centres can help in supply chain management to establish the optimal ‘Facilities’ to manufacture, distribute or collect. The estimated three Economic Centres confirm the movement of Economic Centre towards China, especially Beijing. Haversine formula is used in combination with the Weiszfeld’s algorithm to locate the centres from the geodetic coordinates.