Testing dasymetric techniques to spatially disaggregate the regional population forecasts for South East Queensland

Abstract

This research develops methodologies to explore the future settlement patterns of the population by applying a dasymetric approach to step down the regional population forecasts to smaller geographical units. This research extends the dasymetric method beyond its current simple form to techniques that incorporate more complex density assumptions to disaggregate the spatial data. Several dasymetric techniques are evaluated to spatially disaggregate population data over the study area and to assess their relative accuracies. The outputs of the method are population forecasts across the smaller areas that can be used to derive a deeper understanding of future urban structure.

Keywords:

• population forecasts
• spatial disaggregation
• dasymetric mapping

Acknowledgement

It is acknowledged that the research was a part of large research project ‘Large Scale Urban Models’ (LSUM), funded through the Australian Research Council Linkage program (Project #LP0453563) in collaboration with the industry partner – the Office of Economic and Statistical Research in the Queensland Treasury.