Rapid population assessment using Voronoi polygons

Abstract

We propose a population redistribution model using the Voronoi diagrams generated from the centroids of known and reported buildings in a city. We use Quezon City as a test case to determine the feasibility of the model for other areas. The area-frequency distribution of Voronoi polygon areas follows a power-law with scaling exponent γ. The adherence of the distribution to a power-law supported the use of a naive assumption of the existence of a decaying power-law relation for Voronoi area and population in a region in obtaining a representative "heat map" of population for the districts of Quezon City.