用流模型生成带精确坐标的合成人口,更真实且可用于灾害应对等场景。
Population synthesis with geographic coordinates
- 先用归一化流将经纬度转到规则隐空间,再结合变分自编码器生成
- 在121个数据集上复现真实家庭统计特征,精度优于传统方法
- 适合需要精细地理信息的交通、防疫、灾后规划等研究
生成带有明确地理坐标的合成人口日益重要,但现有方法不足。因经纬度存在大片空白和密度极不均匀的问题,我们提出一种新算法:首先利用归一化流(Normalizing Flows, NF)将空间坐标映射至更规则的隐空间,再通过变分自编码器(VAE)联合建模空间与非空间特征,学习其联合分布并捕捉空间自相关性。我们在121个不同地理区域的数据集上生成了具有真实家庭统计特性的合成房屋,验证了该方法的有效性。同时提出评估框架,兼顾空间精度与实际应用价值,并保障隐私。结果表明,NF+VAE架构显著优于基于拷贝的方法及区域均匀分配等主流基准。该方法可在高分辨率下生成可直接用于洪水响应、疫情传播、疏散规划与交通建模等场景的合成人口。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
It is increasingly important to generate synthetic populations with explicit coordinates rather than coarse geographic areas, yet no established methods exist to achieve this. One reason is that latitude and longitude differ from other continuous variables, exhibiting large empty spaces and highly uneven densities. To address this, we propose a population synthesis algorithm that first maps spatial coordinates into a more regular latent space using Normalizing Flows (NF), and then combines them with other features in a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) to generate synthetic populations. This approach also learns the joint distribution between spatial and non-spatial features, exploiting spatial autocorrelations. We demonstrate the method by generating synthetic homes with the same statistical properties of real homes in 121 datasets, corresponding to diverse geographies. We further propose an evaluation framework that measures both spatial accuracy and practical utility, while ensuring privacy preservation. Our results show that the NF+VAE architecture outperforms popular benchmarks, including copula-based methods and uniform allocation within geographic areas. The ability to generate geolocated synthetic populations at fine spatial resolution opens the door to applications requiring detailed geography, from household responses to floods, to epidemic spread, evacuation planning, and transport modeling.
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