8,791 research outputs found
Weighted Voronoi Region Algorithms for Political Districting
Automated political districting shares with electronic voting the aim of
preventing electoral manipulation and pursuing an impartial electoral
mechanism. Political districting can be modelled as multiobjective partitioning of a graph into connected components, where population equality and compactness must hold if a majority voting rule is adopted. This leads to the formulation of combinatorial optimization problems that are extremely hard to solve exactly. We propose a class of heuristics, based on discrete weighted Voronoi regions, for obtaining compact and balanced districts, and discuss some formal properties of these algorithms. Their performance has been tested on randomly generated rectangular grids, as well as on real-life benchmarks; for the latter instances the resulting district maps are compared with the institutional ones adopted in the Italian political elections from 1994 to 2001
Weighted Voronoi Region Algorithms for Political Districting
Automated political districting shares with electronic voting the aim of
preventing electoral manipulation and pursuing an impartial electoral
mechanism. Political districting can be modelled as multiobjective partitioning of a graph into connected components, where population equality and compactness must hold if a majority voting rule is adopted. This leads to the formulation of combinatorial optimization problems that are extremely hard to solve exactly. We propose a class of heuristics, based on discrete weighted Voronoi regions, for obtaining compact and balanced districts, and discuss some formal properties of these algorithms. Their performance has been tested on randomly generated rectangular grids, as well as on real-life benchmarks; for the latter instances the resulting district maps are compared with the institutional ones adopted in the Italian political elections from 1994 to 2001
Designing a fruit identification algorithm in orchard conditions to develop robots using video processing and majority voting based on hybrid artificial neural network
The first step in identifying fruits on trees is to develop garden robots for different purposes
such as fruit harvesting and spatial specific spraying. Due to the natural conditions of the fruit
orchards and the unevenness of the various objects throughout it, usage of the controlled conditions
is very difficult. As a result, these operations should be performed in natural conditions, both
in light and in the background. Due to the dependency of other garden robot operations on the
fruit identification stage, this step must be performed precisely. Therefore, the purpose of this
paper was to design an identification algorithm in orchard conditions using a combination of video
processing and majority voting based on different hybrid artificial neural networks. The different
steps of designing this algorithm were: (1) Recording video of different plum orchards at different
light intensities; (2) converting the videos produced into its frames; (3) extracting different color
properties from pixels; (4) selecting effective properties from color extraction properties using
hybrid artificial neural network-harmony search (ANN-HS); and (5) classification using majority
voting based on three classifiers of artificial neural network-bees algorithm (ANN-BA), artificial
neural network-biogeography-based optimization (ANN-BBO), and artificial neural network-firefly
algorithm (ANN-FA). Most effective features selected by the hybrid ANN-HS consisted of the third
channel in hue saturation lightness (HSL) color space, the second channel in lightness chroma hue
(LCH) color space, the first channel in L*a*b* color space, and the first channel in hue saturation
intensity (HSI). The results showed that the accuracy of the majority voting method in the best execution
and in 500 executions was 98.01% and 97.20%, respectively. Based on different performance evaluation
criteria of the classifiers, it was found that the majority voting method had a higher performance.European Union (EU) under Erasmus+ project entitled
“Fostering Internationalization in Agricultural Engineering in Iran and Russia” [FARmER] with grant
number 585596-EPP-1-2017-1-DE-EPPKA2-CBHE-JPinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Multiple Objective Step Function Maximization with Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing
We develop a hybrid algorithm using Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA) to solve multi-objective step function maximization problems. We then apply the algorithm to a specific economic problem which is taken out of the corporate governance literature.Numerical computation, Genetic algorithms, Simulated annealing
BARD: Better Automated Redistricting
BARD is the first (and at time of writing, only) open source software package for general redistricting and redistricting analysis. BARD provides methods to create, display, compare, edit, automatically refine, evaluate, and profile political districting plans. BARD aims to provide a framework for scientific analysis of redistricting plans and to facilitate wider public participation in the creation of new plans. BARD facilitates map creation and refinement through command-line, graphical user interface, and automatic methods. Since redistricting is a computationally complex partitioning problem not amenable to an exact optimization solution, BARD implements a variety of selectable metaheuristics that can be used to refine existing or randomly-generated redistricting plans based on user-determined criteria. Furthermore, BARD supports automated generation of redistricting plans and profiling of plans by assigning different weights to various criteria, such as district compactness or equality of population. This functionality permits exploration of trade-offs among criteria. The intent of a redistricting authority may be explored by examining these trade-offs and inferring which reasonably observable plans were not adopted. Redistricting is a computationally-intensive problem for even modest-sized states. Performance is thus an important consideration in BARD's design and implementation. The program implements performance enhancements such as evaluation caching, explicit memory management, and distributed computing across snow clusters.
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