Another example of how real world data is always messier than a neat model:
Vatican is entirely encircled in Rome, therefore any area outside Vatican is closer to Rome than the Vatican, yet if we look at them as point sources, as this map does, you see a lot of other area closer to Vatican.
The official city limits of Rome extend quite far out into the countryside (all the way to Ostia), so by this reckoning, I think the Vatican area would encompass the lion's share of the buildings/population.
It's interesting to see how some of the boundaries drawn by this end up lining up with historical territories. For instance, in this map much of the American southwest comes under Mexico, which it largely was a part of during the middle of the 19th century. Scotland and Wales also fall under Ireland, which also makes sense given their common Celtic ancestry. And Vatican City has much more territory in Italy, which it did throughout much of the last millennium as the Papal States.
You made me curious to find out the antipode of the Vatican City (41.903°N,12.454°E): the nearest land point is Waitangi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand (43.9°S, 176W)
according to: https://www.geodatos.net/en/antipodes/vatican/vatican-city (not 41.903W, -167?W, which is in the ocean).
- a difference metric between this coverage and the actual map (and country breakdown of same)
- a weighted version ([1]) with weights chosen to optimize the above distance metric.
The latter is in itself is a fun math problem -- the gradient on such an objective clearly exists (and the numerical gradient is fairly cheap). But can you prove anything about its structure? Is there a closed form that could be derived from the map information?
What I'd suggest trying is to use the accessibility of the terrain (there are such maps out there) and find the closest capital city according to that. This is basically a global travel time map and I would not be too surprised if that matches some borders rather well.
D3 is not as ubiquitous as one might think. Outside newsroom graphics departments most visualizations consumed through the browser are published using low-effort crappy BI tools like Power BI and Tableau or some generic charting libraries. So still even in 2023 when you see something that’s been meticulously crafted using a low-level approach (like D3) that allows that slick native feel it’s very impressive.
The most surprising bit for me (because it really depends on the world being round) is Alaska - parts of which are closest to Tokyo, Reykjavik, or Ottawa. (No part of Alaska is closest to Washington.)
New Zealand does have a claim containing McMurdo Station. It doesn't have much land since Ross Sea gets close to South Pole.
The unclaimed Marie Byrd Land is next to Ross Dependency. New Zealand would have good claim. But the nearby countries mostly claimed areas directly south.
I wonder which country got the biggest relative bump in territory.
Vatican City is probably a contender, and Timor-Leste nabbed a huge part of Australia.
I think Iceland and New Zealand are also contenders. Iceland absorbs all of Greenland, large portion of Nunavut, and a sizable chunk of Alaska. New Zealand grabs a large part of Antarctica.
I think though if Nuuk were to be included the dynamics of Iceland would change significantly, and similar if you include New Zealand’s already claimed territory on the Antarctic, then their gains are less impressive.
According to Wikipedia:
Mongolia is approximately 1,564,116 sq km, while Russia is approximately 17,098,242 sq km, making Russia 993% larger than Mongolia.
This has nothing to do with real borders, but with the distance to the nearest capital (that's how Voronoi diagrams work)
For instance, that shows that more than half of Russia territory is closest to the capital of Mongolia (which is Ulaanbaatar) than to Moscow, that's the point.
Vatican is entirely encircled in Rome, therefore any area outside Vatican is closer to Rome than the Vatican, yet if we look at them as point sources, as this map does, you see a lot of other area closer to Vatican.