Population Simulation
Our team is trying to paint a picture of a world similar to our world.
Public data can’t tell us where people live who might be more affected by climate impacts.
This includes people from different backgrounds like their race, how much money they have, and what language they speak most often.
Why?
How does this work?
Demonstration of an “almost-real” population
The areas shaded in blue are PUMA’s ACS population counts for household income below $10,000. This is public data.
The dots show the estimated distribution of people (each dot is a ‘person’) and where they live. This is our population simulation.
Our simulation uses public data to estimate a lot about people within small geographic areas.
What more?
Estimating where different groups of people live helps us identify our priority populations.
This helps decision-makers decide how to direct public investments and create policies to keep people safe from bad weather and help them recover when it happens.
We can estimate other things as well!
For example, given where a home is and what the home is like, we can guess how likely it is that there is an older low-income adult living there.
Research conducted by Flannery Black-Ingersoll and Chad Milando (2024).