INTERACTIVE TOOLS Community Projector The Populater Age Profiler Community Explorer

The Community Projector helps planners reconcile dwelling and population forecasts so they can assess the impact of developments.

The Community Projector is a crucial tool for growth areas. It loads Census and other recent data to prepare dwelling, occupancy and population projections across your suburbs or districts. Projections are made for houses, attached houses, flats and non-private dwellings. You can tune the Projector so its calculated population matches another projection, and see the dwelling implications. Or alter the dwelling forecasts and see the population implications.

The Community Projector is interactive software. Through the Projector's menu, you can change assumptions and insert your own data on building completions. Once you have tuned the model, you click [Update] to recalculate the projected population, dwellings and vehicles in each locality in any future year.

The Projector instantly updates its charts and text whenever you change the assumptions. It prints as a full-colour four-page report with text, charts and tables, ready for presentation. You can easily print a set of reports showing the impact of different assumptions. Or cut-and-paste sections into other documents.

Methodology

The Community Projector is loaded with dwelling and occupancy data for all your suburbs for the last two censuses. Using this, it calculates the annual change rates in occupancy rates and dwelling numbers (for all main types of dwellings) for all localities. Extreme rates (e.g. from small numbers) are dampened to produce the trends initially projected for post-2001. The Projector calculates the dwelling numbers and occupancy rates resulting from this trend, to any chosen year. These are multiplied to yield a population estimate for each locality.

However, these initial trends can be overridden by using local knowledge of building opportunities. This is an important step in refining the projections. The Projector is a calculating tool that allows planners to test the implications of various scenarios for dwelling construction and occupancy rate changes, in order to establish a set of consistent assumptions that accord with population estimates derived by other means (e.g. from ABS forecasts or other demographic models that use birth, death and migration rates).

The Projector allows a Council to understand the implications of development scenarios, by showing how population and dwellings will change across its localities.

The Projector report itself explains its methodology in more detail (see sample report)

Specifications

The Community Projector runs in Excel™. It comes loaded with Census data for up to 20 localities you choose, which comprise your Council or region.

To load your initial data into the Projector, The Public Practice creates a Census Data File, included with your purchase of the Projector without additional charge. The Census Data File contains the Basic Community Profile Census data for the last two Censuses for all the localities you choose, together with your council, region and state.

The Projector is also loaded with data on the recent estimate resident population and dwelling approvals for your area, extracted from the most recent National Regional Profile. As well, tables are extracted from the Expanded Community Profile for your area.

If you wish to use the Projector for another area, simply purchase the Census Data File and the 2002-2022 Projections for that area. You download the most recent National Regional Profile from the ABS web site (here) and the 2001 Expanded Community Profile for your area (here). Then use the Projector's menu to load this data and analyse the new area.

Price Samples

Download a sample report as a PDF. The first page is shown right.

Price

The Community Projector is $3,700 plus GST, and comes loaded with the housing and population data from the last two Censuses, available projections, and recent ABS building and population estimates for your area.

Order here.