M.L. Gavrilova and C.J.K. Tan (Eds.): Trans. on Comput. Sci. VI, LNCS 5730, pp. 301–323, 2009. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009 Geographical Analysis of Foreign Immigration and Spatial Patterns in Urban Areas: Density Estimation, Spatial Segregation and Diversity Analysis Giuseppe Borruso University of Trieste, Department of Geographical and Historical Sciences P. le Europa 1, 34127 Trieste, Italy giuseppe.borruso@econ.units.it Abstract. The paper is focused on the analysis of immigrant population and particularly on some of the characteristics of their spatial distribution in an ur- ban environment. The attention is drawn on examining whenever there is a ten- dency to cluster in some parts of a city, with the risk of generating ethnic enclaves or ghettoes, therefore analysing also diversity other than the pure spa- tial distribution. Methods used in the past to measure segregation and other characteristics of immigrants have long been aspatial, therefore not considering relationships between people within a city. In this paper the attention is dedi- cated to methods to analyse the immigrant residential distribution spatially, with particular reference to density and diversity-based methods. The analysis is fo- cused on the Municipality of Trieste (Italy) as a case study to test different methods for the analysis of immigration, and particularly to compare different indices, particularly traditional ones, as Location Quotients and the Index of Segregation, to different, spatial ones, based on Kernel Density Estimation functions, as the S index, and indices of diversity, as Shannon (SHDI) and Simpson (SIDI) ones as well as another diversity index proposed (IDiv). The different analysis and indices are performed and implemented in a GIS envi- ronment 1 . Keywords: Geographical Analysis, Foreign Immigration, Spatial Segregation, Density Estimation, Diversity Index, Shannon Index, Simpson Index, Trieste (Italy). 1 The Analysis of Immigrants at Urban Level: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods The analysis on migrations, as correctly observed by Krasna [1] can rely on a mixed combination of methods and tools, both quantitative and qualitative ones. The former ones benefit from the diffusion of spatial analytical instruments and information 1 GIS analysis was performed using Intergraph GeoMedia Professional and GRID 6.1 under the Registered Research Laboratory (RRL) agreement between Intergraph and the Department of Geographical and Historical Sciences of the University of Trieste (Italy).