PopSim: An Individual-level Population Simulator for Equitable Allocation of City Resources

TL;DR

PopSim is a system that creates semi-synthetic individual-level demographic data from aggregated statistics to help evaluate and improve equitable resource distribution in cities, addressing privacy concerns.

Contribution

Introducing PopSim, a novel method for generating synthetic population data from aggregate statistics to facilitate urban resource equity assessments.

Findings

Generated multiple benchmark datasets for Chicago.

Validated datasets through extensive statistical evaluations.

Demonstrated applications in auditing resource allocation.

Abstract

Historical systematic exclusionary tactics based on race have forced people of certain demographic groups to congregate in specific urban areas. Aside from the ethical aspects of such segregation, these policies have implications for the allocation of urban resources including public transportation, healthcare, and education within the cities. The initial step towards addressing these issues involves conducting an audit to assess the status of equitable resource allocation. However, due to privacy and confidentiality concerns, individual-level data containing demographic information cannot be made publicly available. By leveraging publicly available aggregated demographic statistics data, we introduce PopSim, a system for generating semi-synthetic individual-level population data with demographic information. We use PopSim to generate multiple benchmark datasets for the city of Chicago and conduct extensive statistical evaluations to validate those. We further use our datasets for several case studies that showcase the application of our system for auditing equitable allocation of city resources.