ZDES - The Zone Design System

School of Geography, University of Leeds

a fully usable UNIX version is now available!!

In order to have it up and running, just follow 5 easy steps

1. Make sure you have ARC/INFO 7+ and enough free space locally (2MB+data)
2. Download ZDES3 from our server to your local workspace (about 8MB)
3. Expand the files with tar -xvf zdes3.tar and run ARC/INFO the usual way
4. Change workspace and run ZDES3b by giving &run zdes3b at the ARC prompt
5. If anything goes wrong, check the included help file
6. Contact Seraphim if anything goes wrong.

Normally, you should expect to see some psychedelic rectangles and the ZDES3b logo. The best next step is to read the built-in help and play with the existing data before you attempt to do anything useful risking harm of your own data.

As you might have guessed the designers of this program, the CCG, the School of Geography, the University of Leeds, the Vice-Chancellor and HM cannot be held responsible for any loss of data that might result due to the use of this software etc.

• GIS and the census, M Charlton, L Rao and S Carver, 1995. In Census User's Handbook, S Openshaw (ed.), pp 133-166
  An essential guide to start with Census, GIS and Zone Design.

• Algorithms for reengineering 1991 Census Geography, S Openshaw and L Rao, 1995, Environment and Planning A 27, pp 425-446
  All you ever wanted to know about Zone Design but there was noone to ask.

If the library is closed and you need to read something now, you can have the following relevant papers:

• Some further experiments with designing output areas for the 2001 UK census S Openshaw, S Alvanides, S Whalley, 1998
  The paper presented at the 4th of the ESRC/JISC supported workshops Planning for the 2001 Census

• Designing Zoning Systems for representation of socio-economic data S Openshaw and S Alvanides, 1996 A draft version of the paper to appear in the GISDATA series

• Developing GIS relevant zone based spatial analysis methods S Openshaw, 1996
  A draft paper defending zone based spatial analysis methods in GIS

• Re-engineering 1991 census geography: serial and parallel algorithms for unconstrained zone design S Openshaw and L Rao, 1994
  A draft verSion of the famous E&P A (1995) (Working Paper 94/7, School of Geography, University of Leeds)