The administrative divisions of mainland France as 2D random cellular structures

Gérard Le Caër , Renaud Delannay

The topological properties and some metric properties of the administrative divisions of mainland France in departments and in districts have been investigated. They do not differ from the properties which are usually measured in biological tissues. This confirms the restricted variability of the topological correlations amongst disordered 2D cellular structures with comparable values Of μ2, the variance of the distribution of the number of cell sides. The planar point processes P1 and P2 constituted by the chief towns of departments and of districts respectively have been compared to a reference process formed by the eigenvalues of asymmetric complex random matrices. Process P2 is fairly accounted for by the latter model while the interaction between the points of P1 is more repulsive.

Domaines: Articles anciens

Gérard Le Caër, Renaud Delannay. The administrative divisions of mainland France as 2D random cellular structures. Journal de Physique I, 1993, 3 (8), pp.1777-1800. ⟨10.1051/jp1:1993215⟩. ⟨jpa-00246831⟩