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How to add, change or split areas in Community Profile and Social Atlas

How to request a new area, a boundary change or a split, and what your GIS team needs to send

The small areas on your sites aren't fixed. You can add a new one, adjust a boundary that's moved or split an area that mixes different land uses. You can also add a second or further sets of boundaries alongside the existing ones (” overlay areas”). This involves a request to .id, as the past years’ data has to be adjusted to the new boundaries.

Before you begin

Have these ready before you get in touch.

  • The boundaries, in a GIS format. ESRI Shapefile, MapInfo TAB or KML. Your GIS team will have them.
  • Which sites the change applies to. Community Profile (and the linked social atlas) and Population Forecast are configured separately. While it is often good to get the areas to align between these it’s not always possible - eg. a high growth area may not have enough past data to show on the profile but can be shown separately on the forecast.
  • Your reason for the change. It shapes the advice you get back, particularly on whether a proposed area is large enough to work.

Note on cost. This depends on a few factors, including how many you currently have. Best to reach out to your Client Lead. If unsure, just email support@id.com.au.

Note on the difference between a change and an addition. Adjusting the boundary of an existing area is a straightforward change. Adding a new area is a larger piece of work, because all datasets have to be built for it. The two often get raised as the same ask, and they aren't. Say which one you're after when you get in touch.

Steps

  1. Decide which request you're making: a new area, a boundary adjustment, a split of one area into several pieces or an overlay - a separate geographic view for wards, catchments or planning areas that sits alongside your main profile geography without disturbing it. A single area can be made up of two separate pieces if you need that.
  2. Ask your GIS team for the boundaries as a Shapefile, TAB or KML. Send the files rather than a map image. GIS files make a changed boundary much easier to assess. A marked-up map can work where the boundaries follow obvious features, but it's slower.
  3. Check the population of each resulting area against the 1,000-person guide. Where an area falls short on its own, it's normally grouped with neighbouring areas. It's worth deciding in advance which grouping you'd accept, because it shapes every future report for that part of the LGA.
  4. Say which sites the change applies to. A change to Community Profile does not flow through to Population Forecast automatically. They're separate configurations and they can end up inconsistent - often intentionally, for the reasons shown above. However, if you would like to try to make them consistent, please say so.
  5. Say whether the area should be public or restricted. An overlay can be published on your public site or made login only for council staff use.
  6. Send the request to your Client Lead, with the boundary files, the decisions from steps 1 to 5 and the date you need it by.
  7. Check the areas once they're live. Look at the boundaries on the map and at a couple of familiar figures before you build anything on the new geography.

What to expect

Your new or changed areas, with the datasets built or recut for them. Adding Ward overlays typically takes two to three weeks from receiving the files. This isn't a relabelling: the data is recut to the new boundaries, so the areas hold real data rather than an approximation, and you can quote a figure for the area you actually work to.

The historical series recut as well. Data is normally recut back through the historical series on the new boundaries, so your time series still describes the same ground before and after the change. This is what let's you say a change you're seeing is real and not the result of a boundary moving. This includes data back to 2001 if you have this on the profile.

A geography that matches your strategy. Areas that follow your service catchments, wards or planning units mean the evidence in a document covers the same ground as the recommendations, so an officer doesn't have to explain a mismatch between the two.

Troubleshooting

Place of work and internal migration data don’t use custom areas. These are only available at the LGA geography and in some cases SA2s, so they don’t use the custom areas at all.

Your forecast site and your Community Profile don't match. They're separate configurations, so a change to one doesn't automatically carry to the other. Ask your Client Lead for a review across all your sites rather than fixing one at a time.

A suburb that crosses your LGA boundary looks smaller than it should. Suburbs are cut at the edge of the LGA, so everything in your community profile relates only to the population inside your council's area, unless specifically requested to include areas outside.

You're planning ahead for the 2026 Census. Once areas are set up, they continue through to the next Census automatically, so you’ll have the data on the new boundaries as soon as data are available on the community profile. The only exception is areas built very shortly before Census release - there may be a delay in getting these online due to the priority of the Census update for existing areas.

Inclusion with housing monitor - If you have the housing monitor, areas changes in the Community Profile will also flow through to this tool. However, housing monitor only supports up to two layers of geography in the affordability and consumption sections. These always include the main small area (usually suburb) level plus one other (eg. Wards, Planning areas) and can be discussed with your client lead.

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