City of Bellingham—Daily Population Cycle

City of Belllingham

This geotemporal model illustrates Bellingham's distribution of resident, employment, student, and customer population components for a typical twenty-four-hour weekday cycle. Modeling popula-tion distributions at a relatively high spatial and temporal resolution provides valuable information to planners, transportation engineers, and emergency operations managers.

Resident population estimates are made at the parcel level from the assessor's tax-use codes that identify housing types and unit counts. U.S. Census Bureau occupancy and vacancy rates are then applied to model the population. Ancillary data sources are used to identify population in group housing and student dormitories.

Employee populations are from a geocoded, commercially available business database covering all private and public employment sectors. Customer populations are based on a model that estimates average daily customers per 1,000 square feet of use by industry sector (industrial, commercial, retail, government, etc.). Student populations are based on City of Bellingham Comprehensive Plan estimates for K-12 public school enrollment by school site, and current FTE enrollment statistics for Western Washington University, Whatcom Community College, and Bellingham Technical College.

Courtesy of Chris Behee, City of Bellingham, Washington.

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