The City of Melbourne, Australia commissioned Geografia to develop a 20-year population projection model that simulates the changes in population by age group, gender, and suburb throughout the City. The results of this model were used in a highly interactive website, which was also developed by Geografia.

The underlying model was built in GoldSim, which provided an ideal platform for population forecast models. In order to simulate population projections in a realistic manner, it was necessary to account for multiple uncertain factors and groups of interactive data sets. This model used over 150 stochastic inputs to characterize uncertainty of migration, birth and death rates, dwelling construction, household size and occupancy rates. Factoring in uncertainty and propagating it through complex interactions of the model's logic was essential to understanding probabilistic future outcomes. The model used many arrays of interacting data sets, which were organized by age, time, and place. 

The forecasts developed in this model provided possible futures that explicitily account for the uncertainty in the many inputs. Different statistics can then be viewed to provide a more complete understanding of how the City's population will grow and change.

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Model Description