We’ve updated Place Forecast with population filtering and new demographic reports. You can now filter data by sex and age across all population pages, and we've added four reports that break down population changes by their components.
With the new population filter, you can drill down to specific demographic segments (such as females aged 25-29 or seniors aged 65+) and see what drives their population changes through component-based reports.
Every population page now has a "Filter" button. Click it to slice demographic data by sex (All, Male, or Female) and age (all ages, 5-year age groups like 0-4, or specific individual ages).
The whole page gets filtered: total chart, detail chart, and data table.
Check "Keep filters across pages", and your selection persists across navigation. URLs maintain filter parameters, making it straightforward to share your filtered analysis.
Applied filters show in the button (e.g., "Filter: Female, Ages 25-29") and on every filtered chart.
Analysing school projections? Filter for ages 5-17. Planning aged care? Focus on 70+. Studying young adult retention? Look at 20-34 year-olds. Each demographic question gets its focused view.
(All images here are from the small area of Altona Meadows from our showcase for Hobsons Bay.)
We've also added four new reports that show how population numbers are constructed. Population by Origin breaks down the total population into its components: continuing population (people who stayed), deaths, growing out, out-migrations, births, growing up, and in-migrations.
A reminder here that you can toggle different series in the chart on and off by clicking their entries in the legend. For example, if you want to see births and in-migrations, toggle off everything but births and in-migrations.
Now check out how powerful these charts are with the new population filter. Toggle everything back on (or just reload the page), then filter down to 0-year-olds or 85+-year-olds.
We often used recently the example above where the filter is set to zero-year-olds in the population by origin report to examine the effects of in-migration versus births. These kinds of analysis are also particularly useful for maternal and child health services.
Another new report is In-Migrations by Origin. It illustrates how we developed in-migration projections from census in-migrations, control-adjusted in-migrations, dwelling-adjusted in-migrations, and ultimately, the final combined in-migrations.
Out-Migrations by Origin provides a similar breakdown of components for people leaving.
The Ageing Report isolates the pure effects of aging. It shows "growing up" (people aging into your selected range), "growing out" (people aging out), and the net ageing effect. This data becomes particularly useful when combined with our new population filter and our existing report on Population Change. This report previously showed natural change and migration, and it's now also showing ageing. Select ages 5-17 to see the natural change, the migration, and the ageing of that cohort.
We want to extend a special shout-out and thank you to the lovely people of the Whittlesea City Council. Their feedback was instrumental in improving our tool. They alerted us to a miscalculation in the number of 0 year olds in one of their high-growth areas in their forecast, which led us to develop the population filter and the four new reports. This filter not only fixed the issue but also enhanced the transparency of our population data, a change that benefits all our users.
Granular demographic analysis isn't just nice to have—it's essential for accuracy in rapidly changing areas. What started as a bug fix became a significant feature improvement that benefits all our clients.
Andrew and Bernd from Place Info
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