Socioeconomic Forecasting Interest Group

Mission

AMPO’s Socioeconomic Forecasting Interest Group is a community of practice for staff engaged in demographic, economic, and land use forecasting at regional planning agencies. The group fosters collaboration﹘sharing knowledge, resources, and innovations in our work. We seek to enhance communication and foster peer exchanges through interest group events (webinars, coffee chats, and conferences) and online resources (web forum and contacts list). The interest group aims to move conversations and practices forward, aiding the analytical capabilities and policy recommendations of regional agencies.

Goals

• Provide a forum for MPO staff to share practices, information, and resources;
• Build MPO technical capacity through peer-to-peer sharing, documentation, and dissemination of innovative tools, data, and practices;
• Identify challenges and emerging issues in socioeconomic and land use forecasting;
• Seek opportunities for resource sharing toward common advancement in tools and practices; and
• Communicate and share best practices, guidance, resources, and activities with other AMPO committees and at AMPO events, as appropriate.

Socioeconomic Discussion Forum

AMPO members can join the Socioeconomic Interest Group leadership team and its members on the discussion forum. To gain access to the Interest Group forums, visit this page and use the toggle buttons along the right side to subscribe to one or more Interest Groups.

Leadership Team

Carlos is the project manager of the local forecast at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. His focus is data engineering, model diagnostics, scenario planning, and results interpretation. Carlos holds Masters degrees at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in Urban Planning and Policy and Business Analytics.

Guangyu is the Lead Forecast Modeler at the Southeast Michigan COG, where he’s worked on regional development forecast modeling for more than 17 years. Since joining SEMCOG, Guangyu has focused on implementing the UrbanSim model in Southeast Michigan, providing innovative solutions for various modeling challenges. Currently, he leads efforts to enhance forecast model performance and adopt new modeling techniques. He received his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley.

Committee Liaison

TBD

FHWA Liaison

Sarah Sun, FHWA Travel Model Improvement Program (TMIP) Outreach Manager

AMPO Contact

Ellen Zavisca, ezavisca@ampo.org

Scott has been a Socioeconomic Modeler at the the Maricopa Association of Governments in Phoenix, AZ, for more than 15 years. He works on population estimates and socioeconomic projections as well miscellaneous GIS, analysis and programming tasks. Scott has a master’s in geography from the University of Utah.

Kevin is the program manager for demographics and growth vision at the Southern California Association of Governments. His responsibilities include regional demographic forecasting, scenario planning, regional growth policy, and demographic and economic programs. Kevin also leads in-house research efforts at SCAG which include applied analyses of demographic components, sustainable land use policy, housing policy, travel demand management, development finance, and other topics supporting regional planning.