ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a dynamic spatial microsimulation model of a city region. The overall approach is to characterize the population as a series of individuals with specific demographic attributes, in which the core attributes are age, gender, occupation, marital status, health and ethnicity. The development of dynamic microsimulation models is technically challenging and an intellectually valuable activity in its own right. The model was initialized for base year 2001. A synthetic population was created using known aggregate distributions from the United Kingdom (UK) census. Transition rates for the dynamic model are estimated from a variety of sources including the Registrar General's Vital Statistics, census 'special migration statistics', and the British Household Panel Survey. BackSim procedure was executed through ten complete iterations in order to create an approximation to the population of Leeds in 1991. The actual trend is a substantial growth in professional and service occupations at the expense of manual work, the BackSim model shows almost the exact opposite.
