DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS IN THE NATIONAL ATLAS OF SPAIN BY MEANS
OF GRAVITATIONAL MODELS
A. Pueyo1, J.L. Calvo1, M. Zuсiga1, M. Sebastian1, J.M. Jover1, P. Sanchez-Ortiz2, C. Romera2
1 - University of Zaragoza, Spain
2 - National Geographic Institute, Spain
smas@fomento.es
One of the more developed
scientific tendencies in the last decades has been the transposition of
formulations among branches of knowledge. This is the event of the
gravitational studies, that derive from the Newtonian assumption of the universal
attraction of the bodies. Its simplicity and rigor for the prediction and
valuation have caused that its application to the demographic analysis was
extrapolated.
Traditionally the representation of
the demographic information in a territory were bound to a concrete space with
a static or precise distribution, with the application of these gravitational
models to the demographic variables it changes to a continuous representation
of flows that help to explain many behaviours taking place in the modern
societies tied to the new concept of life basins. It must not forget that human
resources play and suppose a principal role, as much as population and
equipment acquire the protagonist of the territorial plans using, for the first
time, maps of tied population that allow to identify life basins.
For that reason, when the
elaboration of the demographic analysis for the National Atlas of Spain was
approached, it has considered the incorporation of these models necessary to be
able to understand the territorial and social transformations that have taken
place in Spain in the last thirty five years.
This communication displays some
results of this work in period 1970-2005, as well as different methods of
analysis and representation in which models of demographic potentials for
determined periods, weighted variations of population potential or demographic
changes of municipalities taking care of its population variation and its
variation of gravitational attraction, are combined.