A balonian method for the agglomeration of USL in Rome

Recently, the 12 Health Districts in the metropolitan area of Rome have been agglomerated by the Latium Regional Government into 5 larger districts. In this paper, the authors describe a general methodology for solving problems of this kind. First, a graph-theoretic model is developed. On the basis of this model, the authors describe an automatic procedure for the generation of those alternative districting plans that meet the three basic criteria of integrity, contiguity, and balance. The decision maker can subsequently choose from these alternatives one which is deemed to be the most satisfactory with respect to other criteria. In the Rome application, the above procedure yielded 154 districting plans that are more balanced than the Regional Government one. Interestingly enough, a much better balance can be achieved by dividing the Rome territory into 4 districts.