Creating a surrogate commuter network from Australian Bureau of Statistics census data

• Published in: Scientific data 2019-08, Vol.6 (1), p.150-14, Article 150
• Main Authors: Fair, Kristopher M., Zachreson, Cameron, Prokopenko, Mikhail
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 706/2808; 706/648/697/129; 706/689; 706/703/166/986; Census; Computer applications; Data Descriptor; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Statistical analysis
• ISSN: 2052-4463; 2052-4463
• DOI: 10.1038/s41597-019-0137-z

Between the 2011 and 2016 national censuses, the Australian Bureau of Statistics changed its anonymity policy compliance system for the distribution of census data. The new method has resulted in dramatic inconsistencies when comparing low-resolution data to aggregated high-resolution data. Hence, aggregated totals do not match true totals, and the mismatch gets worse as the data resolution gets finer. Here, we address several aspects of this inconsistency with respect to the 2016 usual-residence to place-of-work travel data. We introduce a re-sampling system that rectifies many of the artifacts introduced by the new ABS protocol, ensuring a higher level of consistency across partition sizes. We offer a surrogate high-resolution 2016 commuter dataset that reduces the difference between the aggregated and true commuter totals from ~34% to only ~7%, which is on the order of the discrepancy across partition resolutions in data from earlier years. Design Type(s) modeling and simulation objective • network analysis objective • data validation objective Measurement Type(s) population data Technology Type(s) computational modeling technique Factor Type(s) geographic location Sample Characteristic(s) Australia • anthropogenic habitat Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format)