A synthetic population is a simplified microscopic representation of the actual population. Simplified, because not all attributes are included (for example hair color is deemed to be irrelevant for land use modeling, thus it is ignored). It is microscopic because every household and every person is represented individually. A synthetic population is not identical to the actual population, i.e. most residents will find a record in the synthetic population that matches themselves. Instead, the synthetic population matches various statistical distributions of the actual population, and therefore, is close enough to the true population to be used in modeling.
Two versions of the synthetic population generator have been developed so far, one with German data and one with U.S. data:
Go to Version DE that uses German data
Go to Version US that uses U.S. data