Public Forecasts Are Now Available
We've launched our clients’ first public forecasts, available to anyone without logging in.
You can now share demographic projections with your community and stakeholders using a simple link. Four public forecasts are currently available:
Broken Hill
Carpentaria
Gingin
Temora
You can explore these public forecasts, as well as your own forecasts, in our forecast list. With easier sharing and broader access now possible, we've also focused on improving how you manage who can access forecasts and what they can see. (More on user access management in the next announcement below.)
Public forecasts make demographic data accessible to everyone in your community—from residents and businesses to researchers and students. When you're ready, we can work with you to publish your forecast in the same way.
Public forecasts are in a special Public Active state, which means the numbers are locked and stable, perfect for community sharing and long-term reference. (More on forecast states in the next announcement below.)
User Access Management and Forecast States
We've introduced a comprehensive role-based permission system that gives you full control over who can access and manage your forecasts.
Place Forecast now has three user roles, each with different levels of access:
Forecast User: Can view active forecasts, use charts, and export data.
Champion: Can access all forecasts, including pending versions
Sponsor: Full access to all forecasts, can manage user roles, and can change forecast states
The new user roles work together with forecast states to give you powerful control over your data. Forecast users can enjoy stable forecasts for planning purposes, while Champions can work with up-to-date numbers (and therefore changing forecasts), and Sponsors can organise who has which role.
Understanding Forecast States
Forecasts now progress through three states:
Internal Pending: Your development version that continuously updates with new ABS data releases and assumption changes. Only Sponsors and Champions can access it.
Internal Active: Locked and stable for planning purposes. Accessible to all users. Automatic updates stop once a forecast becomes active.
Public Active: Published version accessible to anyone without a login. Numbers remain stable and fixed for community sharing.
Forecast states enable us to keep active forecasts stable while still providing all the latest updates in pending versions. This means you can now confidently publish forecasts publicly while development continues on the next version.
To better understand how user roles and forecast states interact, visit our forecast access user documentation page for more details before exploring management features in your account.
Look for the User Access page in your forecast (under the new menu Settings) to see all users and their roles. You'll also see visual indicators throughout the system showing forecast states.
Additional Improvements
Age Profile Visualisation Reports
New visual reports show age distributions for all demographic components, making it easier to validate and understand your projection drivers.
You now have dedicated age profile views for births, deaths, and in- and out-migrations. These interactive charts help you quickly spot anomalies and understand the age patterns driving your projections without having to dive into raw data tables.
You'll find these visualisations under Components, then within each component—for example, Births → Birth Age Profile. Check them out in our Showcase Hobsons Bay (which conveniently is also public now): age profile for births, deaths, in-migrations, out-migrations.
Taken together, these updates give you new ways to share forecasts publicly and manage user access. Public forecasts, role-based permissions, and forecast states help you confidently manage projections from development to publication, supporting a strong workflow for your organisation.
If you'd like to make your forecast public or have questions about user roles and access controls, please reach out—we're here to help.
We’ve spent a lot of time in the last few months on the changes above. We’re stoked to have public forecasts now. It’s amazing for our clients and us to show the world what we are working on. We’re very happy about that.
We’ve also been busy with the latest updates to birth and death data, which we will release shortly. We already use the new forecast states system for that, and we’re very excited about it.
Andrew and Bernd from Place Info
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