From population to decisions using geodemographic analysis.

Analyzing and understanding the development of the population, is a critical component in many planning tasks in the municipalities. Population prognoses are calculated to predict how the population is going to develop, but this is often a ‘once a year’ prognosis, that is subject to great uncertainty.

In the GIS departments, most municipalities purchase data packages from for example KMD or LIFA, which contain population data from the Central Person Registry (CPR), to be updated on a daily basis. That means, that the planners have up to date data regarding population. With these data, they can determine who lives where, when people move, when a child is born, etc.

In modern webGIS applications, we have the capabilites of conducting complex on-the-fly queries and calcualtions in the registry databases, which enables the construction of simple tools that performs advanced analysis.  This is for example often used in  the case of geodemographics and population monitoring, where population distribution.

Making these tools both informative and user friendly, has been important in the development process. The goal is to make tools that in a simplistic way creates standardized outputs as charts and tables. The users can select an existing residential area, or draw their own polygon in the map – and the statistics are calculated right on-the-fly. Based on the ‘live’ data from the GIS databases, the users can extract a long list of population indices that gives a complete overview of the current population situation in any area of the municipality.

Through a series of use-cases from Danish municipalities, I will demonstrate how the tools are used to make informed decisions – using the data that the municipalities already have. Examples will include not only age and gender based demographics, but also elements such as family size, ethnicity and housing. Finally, I will look at the road ahead for geodemographic analysis in webGIS. What is the demand of the customers, and how can we meet them, in order to get geodemographic analysis to become an even further integrated part of the planning toolbox.