Synthetic population

Synthetic population is artificial population data that fits the distribution of people and their relevant characteristics living in a specified area as according to the demographics from census data. Synthetic populations are often a basis for microsimulation or also agent based models of population behavior. The latter can be used for simulation of disease transmission, traffic and similar.

Synthetic population are initial sets of agents with detailed demographic and socioeconomic attributes, which allow execution of agent-based microsimulation. Due to privacy reasons and data limitations and restrict observability of entire real population. Therefore, the population synthesis procedure is applied, which expands a small data sample of population by using auxiliary data, to generate a synthetic population as close as possible to the real population in its characteristics.

Examples of application

Chicago Social Interaction Model (chiSIM) is an agent-based simulation of individuals and locations in Chicago along with their daily behavior. The population is modeled as a set of heterogeneous, interacting, adaptive agents. These agents are the population of all the residents of Chicago.

In 2023, World Data Lab created a synthetic population for New York using microdata and summary statistics. It was used to calculate the poverty levels among the neighborhoods for targeted social programs.

A synthetic population for Germany was built and is marketed by Statista under the name SynthiePop. It was already applied together with the German Federal Railway Authority to study the local impact of cheaper public transport passes.

In Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Office for Spatial Development and the Swiss Federal Railways created a synthetic population to better plan traffic.

References

  1. ↑ Huynh, N; Namazi-Rad, Mohammad-Reza; Perez, P.; Berryman, M.; Chen, Q.; Barthelemy, J. (1 January 2013). "Generating a synthetic population in support of agent-based modeling of transportation in Sydney". Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A: 1357–1363.
  2. ↑ Hörl, Sebastian; Balac, Milos (2021). "Synthetic population and travel demand for Paris and Île-de-France based on open and publicly available data". Transportation Research Part C. 130 103291. Bibcode:2021TRPC..13003291H. doi:10.1016/j.trc.2021.103291. hdl:20.500.11850/495494.
  3. ↑ Xu, Zhujing; Glass, Kathryn; Lau, Colleen L.; Geard, Nicholas; Graves, Patricia; Clements, Archie (2017). "A synthetic population for modelling the dynamics of infectious disease transmission in American Samoa". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 16725. Bibcode:2017NatSR...716725X. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-17093-8. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 5711879. PMID 29196679. S2CID 256907125.
  4. ↑ Mueller, Kirill; Axhausen, Kay W. (September 2011). "Hierarchical IPF: Generating a synthetic population for Switzerland". ERSA Conference Papers.
  5. ↑ Zhu, Yi; Ferreira, Joseph (January 2014). "Synthetic Population Generation at Disaggregated Spatial Scales for Land Use and Transportation Microsimulation". Transportation Research Record. 2429 (1): 168–177. doi:10.3141/2429-18. S2CID 16819119.
  6. ↑ Macal, Charles M.; Collier, Nicholson T.; Ozik, Jonathan; Tatara, Eric R.; Murphy, John T. (December 2018). "Chisim: An Agent-Based Simulation Model of Social Interactions in a Large Urban Area". 2018 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC). pp. 810–820. doi:10.1109/WSC.2018.8632409. ISBN 978-1-5386-6572-5. S2CID 59600666.
  7. ↑ "Fighting poverty with synthetic data". Brookings. 2023. Retrieved 6 July 2023.
  8. ↑ Statista. "Synthetische Populationsdaten". de.statista.com (in German). Retrieved 2026-07-09.
  9. ↑ Lewanczik, Niklas (2026-01-20). "Synthetische Populationen: Einfaches Targeting per Knopfdruck". OnlineMarketing.de (in German). Retrieved 2026-07-09.
  10. ↑ EBA, DZSF (2026). "Die Kosten des Pendelns und der Einfluss des Deutschlandtickets" (PDF).
  11. ↑ "DZSF - Projekte - Die Kosten des Pendelns und der Einfluss des Deutschlandtickets". www.dzsf.bund.de (in German). Archived from the original on 2025-05-20. Retrieved 2026-07-09.
  12. ↑ ARE, SBB (2022). "Synthetische Population 2022" (PDF).