CECAN Webinar: SIPHER’s Synthetic Population - An Introduction

CECAN Webinar: SIPHER’s Synthetic Population - An Introduction
Presenter: Nik Lomax (Professor of Population Geography at the University of Leeds, Co-Director of the Consumer Data Research Centre and Co-Investigator for the SIPHER Consortium)
Webinar Overview:
Systems Science in Public Health and Health Economics Research (SIPHER) is a research consortium which uses systems science methods to support policy decision making with the aim of improving health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities. In this presentation, Nik will provide an overview of SIPHER’s synthetic population, including how it was developed, how it can be used to support decision making as well as strengths and limitations. The lack of a comprehensive register-based system in Great Britain has made it challenging to access data on individuals across multiple domains. The synthetic population helps bridge this gap by providing a representative, attribute-rich dataset representing individuals within the whole of the GB population that can be used for micro-level modelling. It is constructed from Understanding Society, Census and mid-year estimate data with spatial identifiers for Lower Super Output Areas in England and Wales and Data Zones in Scotland. The synthetic dataset will be of use to anyone who wishes to understand the spatial distribution of attributes including health, housing status, education and employment. It can be used to assess the spatial and sub-group impact that a policy might have. The data can be accessed via the UK data Service as CSV files which means users can analyse the data using their statistical package of choice.