June, 2024
Prepared by RTI International 3040 Cornwallis Road Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
RTI has developed this code for creation of synthetic populations from the U.S. Census TIGER and American Community Survey (ACS) data with geospatial placement leveraging ORNL's LandScan USA data product. The resulting synthetic populations provide detailed and spatially explicit representation of the socio-demographic distribution of the U.S. population suitable for geospatial analyses and modeling use cases including microsimulation, individual and agent-based modeling (IBM/ABM).
├── data
│ ├── external <- Data from third party sources.
│ ├── interim <- Intermediate data that has been transformed.
│ ├── processed <- The final, canonical data sets for modeling.
│ └── raw <- The original, immutable data.
└── rti_synth_pop <- Source code for use in this project.
│ ├── __init__.py <- Makes rti_synth_pop a Python module.
│ ├── config.py <- Configuration file.
│ ├── sample_pums.py <- PUMS sampling.
│ ├── task_* <- task files with task functions to be executed on the command
│ line by invoking 'pytask'
├── environment.yml <- The requirements file for reproducing the analysis environment.
├── .here <- Empty file that will stop the search if none of the other criteria
│ apply when searching head of project.
├── setup.py <- Makes project pip installable (pip install -e .)
│ so synth_pop can be imported.
│── .gitignore <- standard gitignore
├── LICENSE <- License information
├── CITATION.cff <- Citation metadata
├── README.md <- The top-level README for developers using this project.
Project based on the cookiecutter conda data science project template.
The correct citation for this code is:
Kruskamp, N., Kery, C., & Rineer, J. rti_synth_pop [Computer software].https://github.com/RTIInternational/rti_synth_pop
See the LICENSE file at the root of this repo. This code is licensed under:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
conda env create -f environment.yml
activate rti_synth_popor
mamba env create -f environment.yml
activate rti_synth_popThe packages necessary to run the project are now installed inside the conda environment.
Note: The following sections assume you are located in your conda environment.
Currently, the installation of the rti_synth_pop module is included in the environment file. If you need to re/install it manually, please follow these instructions:
To move beyond notebook prototyping, all reusable code should go into the rti_synth_pop/ folder package. To use that package inside your project, install the project's module in editable mode, so you can edit files in the rti_synth_pop folder and use the modules inside your notebooks :
pip install --editable .To use the module inside your notebooks, add %autoreload at the top of your notebook :
%load_ext autoreload
%autoreload 2Example of module usage :
from rti_synth_pop.utils.paths import data_dir
data_dir()The original config.py file from this repo is set to run the state of Wyoming (WY) for 2021. To change this in the config you can specify a list of tuples containing the state abbreviations and FIPS GEOIDs for the states you would like to
create synthetic populations for. See lines 19 and 21 in config.py and follow this format [("st_abbr1", "st_fips1"), ("st_abbr2", "st_fips2")]. Pytask will generate a synthetic population for each state in the list.
A data directory is included to store the inputs, outputs and intermediate files. This folder structure can be found and customized as needed in the config.py file.
data/raw <- raw data from ACS sources, TIGER, and LandScan are stored here
data/interim <- intermediate files created during the process are put here
data/processed <- final synthetic population files (a person and household file
for each state and year) are created here.
You must manually download the LandScan population density data from ORNL's LandScan Website. All other data should be downloaded automatically for you. The LandScan zip should be placed into the /data/raw folder. By example the config.py file is initially setup for WY and for 2019, thus for WY 2019 you will need to download the landscan-usa-2019-night-assets.zip file and place it into the /data/raw folder.
This project uses pytask to execute a series of tasks for creation of a synthetic populations. Once you have installed and activated the rti_synth_pop environment and are in root directory for of this cloned repo simply invoke:
pytask
on the command line to execute all tasks in order for each state and year in config.py.
To execute a specific task, use this syntax:
pytask -k <task file>::<task function name> (ex: pytask -k task_1_download_census_data.py::task_download_census_data).
Each task depends on specific input files being created from previous tasks, which are defined in the _create_parametrization call above each task. Outputs to a task are indicated in the function definition. They are marked as Annotated[Path, Product] to show they are products of this task. If all output files already exist for a task, the task will not rerun.
The synthetic populations are output in tables and records of households and persons for each state and year.
Output files are in the format of:
{st_abbr}_{year}_{households/persons}.parquet.
A households geospatial file will be created with a geometry point column in the format of:
{st_abbr}_{year}_{households/persons}_w_geom.parquet
All spatial data are in EPSG:4326. Latitude and longitude columns also have the EPSG number in the column name as a reminder.
Synthetic population data are generated from tables published by the U.S. Census Bureau in the American Community Survey. ACS 5-year data are used to generate the synthetic population. For a complete list of tables from the ACS, please see the config.py file where the exact tables and columns are provided.
To distribute household point locations in our synthetic population, we use the LandScan USA 2020 population density data under the CC BY 4.0 licensing with citation (below). These data must be downloaded manually and put into the raw data folder. Please see the LandScan data portal to download the data.
Weber, E., Moehl, J., Weston, S., Rose, A., & Sims, K. (2021). LandScan USA 2020 [Data set]. Oak Ridge National Laboratory. https://doi.org/10.48690/1523373
Census TIGER data are also used.
When sampling households from the PUMS to fill our synthetic population a series of expanding criteria are applied.
- Sample from within the same PUMA, look for matching on all variables
- Sample from the entire state (with records weighted by how similar their PUMA is to the source PUMA). Look for matching on all variables
- Sample from within same PUMA. Look for households with all variables matching except for household size, where we allow +/- one difference in size, or +/- 2 if the size is the minimum or maximum.
- Same as 3 but sampling from the entire state with weights.
- Sample from within same PUMA but in addition to household size we allow for the age of the head of householder to be off by +/- one group.
- Same as 5 but sampling from the entire state with weights.
- Sample from the same PUMA but on top of loosening restrictions for household size and head of householder age, we also loosen the criteria for household income to allow households with +/- one income group difference.
- Same as 7 but sample from the entire state with weights.
- Sample from within same PUMA but now allow head of householder ethnicity to be anything on top of having no restrictions for ethnicity and looser restrictions for household size, income, and age.
- Same as 9 but sample from the entire state with weights.
- Sample from within same PUMA but now also allow the household to have any income on top of the earlier expanded criteria.
- Same as 11 but sample from the entire state with weights.
NOTE: most households are found in steps 1 and 2, with just a small percentage requiring further steps.