Patent ID: 7596542

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for identifying common borders of geographically defined regions, the method comprising: reading ZIP codes of the geographically defined regions and associated cartographic boundaries of the geographically defined regions from a database, the cartographic boundaries including pairs of coordinates; storing the pairs of coordinates for the boundaries in a matrix; calculating values representing each pair of coordinates in the matrix; storing the calculated values in an encoded coordinates matrix; using the values in the encoded coordinates matrix to determine common segments of the common borders of the geographically defined regions; forming, using a processor, a connection matrix storing the ZIP codes of the geographically defined regions, wherein connected ZIP codes of the geographically defined regions are stored in a same row, the connected ZIP codes being geographically contiguous and sharing the determined common segments of the common borders of the geographically defined regions; calculating a neighborhood matrix storing the ZIP codes of the geographically defined regions and storing values that represent an indication of closeness of each ZIP code in the neighborhood matrix to a target ZIP code in the neighborhood matrix; and storing the neighborhood matrix in a storage.