Statistical Classificatory Analysis Applied to Population Zones

摘要

An important activity within the analysis of a city's dynamics is its division in zones. The purpose of a division in zones is to define areas with common characteristics (socioeconomic, land use, connection by roads, etc.) in order to simplify the analyses. Each discipline that studies urban communities has its own criteria to describe the corresponding zones. In this paper we apply Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Cluster Analysis to population data in order to obtain a classification of zones and at the same time to obtain an auxiliary tool for the definition of aggregated zones. The study area is the Metropolitan Zone of Mexico's Valley (MZMV) and the data comes from the XII Population Census. The unit observation used is the Basic Geo-statistical Area (BGSA) which is the one defined by the National Institute of Geography, Statistics and Informatics of Mexico (INEGI). The objective of this study is to use the resulting classification and variable groupings to validate, update or correct previously defined zones used for transportation planning and to provide additional means to analyze the transportation in the MZMV. Additionally, the results may prove useful for other disciplines that use population data to analyze the city's behavior.