AGGLOMERATIVE HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING FOR REGIONAL GROUPING IN CENTRAL JAVA BASED ON WELFARE INDICES

Central Java Province comprises 35 regencies/cities with diverse welfare characteristics. These variations present challenges for the government in formulating targeted development policies. This study aims to group regions in Central Java based on welfare indices to support more effective policy planning. The Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering method with the Average Linkage approach is applied to cluster the regions based on three attributes: Human Development Index, Uninhabitable Houses, and Economic Growth Rate. Data were obtained from the Central Java Provincial Social Service and the official website of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) and processed using the proposed method. Experimental results indicate three clusters with proportions: 32 regions in cluster 1 (91.4%), 2 regions in cluster 2 (5.7%), and 1 region in cluster 3 (2.9%). Regions with higher welfare dominate the first cluster, while the second and third clusters include regions facing more significant welfare challenges. Clustering results were evaluated using the Silhouette Score (0.535) and Davies-Bouldin Index Score (0.610), demonstrating that the applied method effectively grouped regions based on the specified attributes. The findings of this study are anticipated to lay the groundwork for more directed and effective development policies.