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Planning

Plan for the people who actually live there.

Cambium models every resident of all 50 states, down to the census block, from over 200 public datasets already joined. One model, instead of paying to assemble the same data one plan at a time.

System Architecture

Not a sample. The whole population.

Survey panels reach a few hundred people and miss whoever did not answer. Cambium starts from the Census Bureau's full count instead, at census-block level, then adds other public data, like IRS migration records, to bring it up to date month by month.

People

A full count of the population, with no personal data in it.

Stacked layers

216 attributes per person

Age, income, commute, household composition and tenure held on the same record, not in separate tables.

Anchor

Fits how you already work

Export to Excel, or take the map straight into the report. Works alongside the GIS and forecasting tools you use.

Connected network

One model, every department

Planning, transportation and public health work from the same population instead of each buying their own.

337

Million people modelled

Every resident of all 50 states and DC, 2017 to 2024

200+

Public datasets

Joined into one model, not stacked side by side

Use Cases

Four questions a planning team can ask the population.

Each of them turns on who lives somewhere, not just how many. Cambium models every resident as a synthetic person carrying age, income, tenure, commute and household composition on one record, so a question can go to a whole population and come back answered.

Public consultation

Ask

Would you support a four storey building on this block?

The people who turn up to a hearing are not the people who live there.

Ask the residents of the affected blocks instead, and read the answer by age, tenure and income, so you know where the objection is coming from before the room does. Preparation for a consultation, not a replacement for one.

Research

Built from conversations with working planners.

What they are working with

“Of the 169 communities in Connecticut, there’s probably 10 or fewer that have a GIS or a data person on staff full-time.”

Planning consultant

Connecticut

What they asked for

“I can never find one source that has everything I need to tell the story.”

Municipal planner and grant writer

New Jersey

Where it earns its place

“You need to know what’s going to happen before you come in the room.”

Planning director, 42 years

Former federal and municipal

Our Data

From averages to households.

Public data hands you an average and calls it a place. Cambium models the same ground household by household.

Coverage

Doing it yourself

Whoever answered the survey

CambiumFull countevery person in the population

Geography

Doing it yourself

Whatever level each source publishes at

CambiumCensus blockin all 50 states and DC

Assembly

Doing it yourself

Days per dataset, repeated every plan

Cambium216attributes on every person record, from 200+ joined datasets

History

Doing it yourself

One vintage at a time

Cambium2017–2024tracked forward, plus projections two years out

Personal data

Doing it yourself

Handled by you

CambiumNonepersonal records held
The Missing Layer

The missing layer between data and decisions.

What is missing today

GIS and permitting systems store and display data well. Neither models your residents as they exist together, in households and neighbourhoods. That join is what planners pay for again and again. Cambium does it once and keeps it current.

  • Attributes that occur together

    Age, income, commute, household composition and tenure on the same person record, not in separate tables.

  • No personal data

    The census foundation is differentially private before Cambium receives it. No individual is identified, tracked or stored.

One model, built in sequence.

Cambium does not stack datasets side by side. It starts from the census count, repairs the household structure, then assigns schooling, benefits, employment, income and housing person by person, then runs the whole population forward and back across the years it covers.

How the joint model is builtCensus Bureau, ACS Survey and Local Records feed a single joint model, which generates one agent per resident. Each source is shown with the shape of its coverage: the census count is complete, the survey is a sample, local records are patchy.PUBLIC SOURCESSYNTHETIC POPULATIONCensus BureauACS SurveyLocal RecordsJOINT MODELAgent #1405Agent #8912Agent #0231

Early access

Built with planners.

Cambium is built on the full census count, not a survey panel, and the use cases come from the people who do this work. Early access opens to a first group of planning teams.

Cambium reconstructs the United States population from public data, individual by individual. Planning is one of the fields it is built for.

Got data of your own? We are pooling it with the community