Synthetic population data download

[dlksmc]

The Synthetic Populations wiki page says the synthetic population data can be downloaded from MIDAS, but the site is no longer working. The files available from the population file download page on the University of Pittsburgh FRED site appear to be quite a bit different than the county population files in this repo.

Files included in FRED repo:

• 2010_ver1_42065_age_compare.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_income_compare.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_metadata.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_pums_h.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_pums_p.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_race_compare.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_schools.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_size_compare.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_summary_compare.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_synth_gq_people.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_synth_gq.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_synth_households.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_synth_people.txt
• 2010_ver1_42065_workplaces.txt

Files available in archive from FRED download page:

• gq_people.txt
• gq.txt
• hospitals.txt
• households.txt
• METADATA.txt
• people.txt
• schools.txt
• workplaces.txt

Comparison of columns in an example file:

Column	2010_ver1_42065_synth_households.txt	households.txt
sp_id	✅	✅
serialno	✅	❌
stcotrbg	✅	✅
hh_race	✅	✅
hh_income	✅	✅
hh_size	✅	❌
hh_age	✅	❌
latitude	✅	✅
longitude	✅	✅

Can FRED generate the correct format from the files available on the working download page? Or is there another way to create/acquire the necessary synthetic population data for other counties?

[brandomr]

@dlksmc when I try to use the downloadable county-level files I get a segfault. Were you able to make any headway here?

[dlksmc]

@brandomr we ended up reaching out directly to the Epistemix folks to get a license to the latest version of FRED, including the synth pop data.