What is Placemaker?

Placemaker is Informed Decisions' planning tool that helps organisations understand where and when demand for infrastructure will grow. It brings together population and dwelling growth forecasts for Australian communities, built from the residential development pipeline, so you can plan for the community you will need to serve, not the one that already exists.

How Placemaker is used

There are two primary ways to work in Placemaker.

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

Forecast data is available in Placemaker at the following geographic levels, all sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Level	Full name	Typical population	What planners use it for
SA1	Statistical Area Level 1	200 to 800 people	Fine-grained local analysis. Building block for catchments.
SA2	Statistical Area Level 2	3,000 to 25,000 people	Community-level planning. Broadly corresponds to suburbs.
SA3	Statistical Area Level 3	30,000 to 130,000 people	Sub-regional analysis.
SA4	Statistical Area Level 4	100,000 to 500,000 people	Regional and strategic planning.
SAL	Suburbs and Localities	Varies	Suburb-level analysis using gazetted suburb boundaries.
LGA	Local Government Area	Varies	Analysis aligned to council boundaries.
GCCSA	Greater Capital City Statistical Area	Varies	Capital city and rest-of-state analysis.
STE	State and Territory	Varies	State-level context and benchmarking.

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.