Sometimes simple is good enough: An analysis of methods for residential building population estimation

Residential building population data can be useful in a breadth of urban planning, health, transportation, and business applications. Unfortunately, complete datasets of residential building populations are not widely available for use in Canada, and therefore either larger census geographies are used or residential building populations must be estimated. This research explores four different methods of estimating residential building populations, including: an equal allocation method, two measures based on building volume, and a novel method that integrates census data at the dissemination area level to calibrate a population estimation model. This work comprises three parts: 1) a description of these approaches, 2) an evaluation of their validity in a case study in Hamilton, Ontario, and 3) an application of these methods in measuring spatial accessibility to schools. Our results show that most methods yield very similar results, and most provide reasonable estimates of building populations that could be useful for some analytical tasks. However, all methods resulted in instances of error, particularly for the largest population buildings. We conclude that while more complex methods do not significantly outperform simpler methods based on building volume alone, the blend of these methods could yield more accurate population predictions.