synthACS: Spatial Microsimulation Modeling with Synthetic American Community Survey Data

Abstract

synthACS is an R package that provides flexible tools for building synthetic microdatasets based on American Community Survey (ACS) base tables, allows data-extensibility and enables to conduct spatial microsimulation modeling (SMSM) via simulated annealing. To our knowledge, it is the first R package to provide broadly applicable tools for SMSM with ACS data as well as the first SMSM implementation that uses unequal probability sampling in the simulated annealing algorithm. In this paper, we contextualize these developments within the SMSM literature, provide a hands-on user-guide to package synthACS, present a case study of SMSM related to population dynamics, and note areas for future research.