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What is Placemaker?

Placemaker is Informed Decisions' planning tool that helps organisations understand where and when demand for infrastructure or services will grow.

Placemaker supports two primary workflows. View and explore forecast information on a map or assess future growth around a known location. 

Explore is where you start when you do not yet have a specific location in mind. Browse population and dwelling forecasts spatially across Australia to identify where your target population is growing and when that growth will arrive.

Catchment is where you start when you have a location in mind. Define a service area by drive time, radius, or drawn boundary and get population and dwelling forecasts for that exact geography, not the nearest suburb.

What Placemaker includes

  • Population and dwelling growth forecasts from SA1 level up to state level
  • A national view of the residential development pipeline
  • Spatial map view to explore forecast data across Australian communities
  • Catchment creation tools to define and analyse a specific service area
  • Data insights for each catchment, including population composition and growth trajectory
  • Export tools to take forecast data into reports and presentations

Who uses Placemaker

Placemaker is used by network planners and strategy teams who make decisions about where to build or invest in infrastructure. Common sectors include education, aged care, early learning, retail, financial services, utilities, emergency services and local government.

Geographic coverage

Placemaker uses the ABS standard geographic hierarchy to display and aggregate forecast data. The geography you work at determines how granular your analysis can be.

Level Full name Typical population What planners use it for
SA1 Statistical Area Level 1 200 to 800 people Fine-grained local analysis. SA1 is the building block for catchments in Placemaker. The smaller the unit, the more precisely you can define a service area.
SA2 Statistical Area Level 2 3,000 to 25,000 people Community-level planning. SA2 areas broadly correspond to suburbs and are the most common unit for understanding how a local community is growing or changing.
SA4 Statistical Area Level 4 100,000 to 500,000 people Regional and strategic planning. SA4 areas align to labour market regions and are useful for understanding demand at a broader network level.
STE State and Territory Varies State-level context and benchmarking.

Catchments in Placemaker are built from SA1 areas. When you draw a catchment boundary, Placemaker aggregates forecast data across the SA1 areas that fall within it.

For more details on how ABS geographies work, see What are standard ABS geographies?.

How to access Placemaker

Placemaker is available at app.id.com.au. Your organisation manages access. If you do not yet have access, contact your Informed Decisions account manager or see Getting started with Placemaker

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