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How can we define a robust metric for "most discontinuous country" and then rank all states according to it? (feddit.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/askscience

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

More of a classification question, but I'm really curious about what the metric would look like if we try to be systematic about it.

For context, there's several countries that are more or less famous for being geographically discontinuous. Top of the mind nowadays is Azerbaijan, whose sizeable territory of Nakhchivan has no land connections with the rest of the country. There's also Equatorial Guinea, whose capital city is on island which is smaller than the continental territory. That's the same for Denmark, although we seem to think of it less, because of the much smaller distances and significantly more connectivity. Then you have Indonesia which I currently think might be the most discontinuous country, with territory spanning across at least 4 major landmasses but which are shared with other countries.

But then you have countries such as Greece, Japan, or even Sweden, which are more or less archipelagic countries but do not stand out in the way Indonesia or Azerbaijan does.

How can we define a measure of geographic discontinuity that gives us a reasonable ranking? I would imagine we start with some measure that looks how much of the whole territory is in one contagious unit (less prominent main landmass = more discontinuity) but perhaps we also introduce average distance between units.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I would imagine using some sort of shapefile that I can run calculations in a scripted manner. So, in that case it will depend on the resolution of the shapefile.