Mission
AMPO’s Socioeconomic Forecasting Working 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 working group events (webinars, coffee chats, and conferences) and online resources (web forum and contacts list). The working 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
Join the Socioeconomic working group leadership team and its members on the My AMPO discussion forum. Click My AMPO on the top right side of this page and log in to join the discussion. If you have any questions, click the how-to instructions below.
Leadership Team
Zachary Feldman
Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG)
Ben Gruswitz
Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC)
Ben Gruswitz, AICP, Manager, Socioeconomic and Land Use Analytics at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) in Philadelphia. Ben has a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. A former travel demand modeler at the agency, he now forecasts population and employment, develops regional indicators, and performs various analyses in support of DVRPC’s long-range plan and other agency needs. Ben is also a member of the Oversight Board for the Census Transportation Planning Products (CTPP) Program.
Jeffrey Nutting
Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG)
Jeff Nutting is the forecast coordinator at SEMCOG, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, located in Detroit, Michigan. He has 25 years of experience in socioeconomic forecasting and leads SEMCOG’s regional land use modeling efforts. Jeff is also involved in developing the State of Michigan’s Household Travel Survey, the key source of information on travel behavior in Michigan. He received a BA and MUP from Wayne State University.
Elly Theocharides
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Elly Theocharides is a land use modeler at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (Bay Area, CA). Elly has Masters degrees in Transportation Engineering and City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley. She has worked on transportation and land use analytics at MPOs of various sizes and as a consultant, with a focus on microeconomic models and land use policy analysis. For the last five years she has conducted land use model development and application at MTC to support the region’s forecasting and long range planning.
David Tedrow
San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG)
David Tedrow is the manager of the Economic and Demographic Modeling Group at SANDAG. Among its responsibilities, this group generates the annual current year socioeconomic estimates and the long-term population and job forecast for the region. David has over 25 years of experience in socioeconomic forecasts, demographic analysis, and the creation of consumer expenditure models. Prior to SANDAG David conducted these analyses at Equifax and Nielsen. He received his BS and MS in Biological Engineering from UCSD.
AMPO Contact
Caitlin Cook: ccook@ampo.org
