Method and system for counting households within a geographic area

A method of counting households within a geographic region utilizing at least one geographic information service (GIS) database, a preprocessing routine, a primary build routine, a seasonal build routine, and a merge routine, wherein the primary build routine, seasonal build routine, and merge routine are in communication with the GIS database, the method comprising the steps of:

• (a) receiving as input at the at least one GIS database a plurality of data sets, wherein each of the data sets comprises a plurality of households, wherein each of the plurality of households is either a non-seasonal household or a seasonal household, wherein at least one of the plurality of households is a non-seasonal household and at least one of the plurality of households is a seasonal household, and wherein each of the households is associated with a geographic sub-region within the region, and further wherein each geographic sub-region is further divisible into at least one sub-sub-region;
• (b) calculating at the preprocessing routine a set of geographic correspondences between the sub-regions of at least two of the plurality of data sets;
• (c) utilizing at the primary build routine the set of geographic correspondences to allocate the non-seasonal households from at least one of the plurality of data sets to at least one of the geographic sub-regions, wherein the allocation step is performed by one of a plurality of models, and further wherein the plurality of models comprises at least one of a postal delivery statistics model, a postal-to-census-data boundary overlap model, and a need-allocation model;
• (d) calculating an actual need for at least one of the geographic sub-regions, wherein said actual need includes a weighting factor which determines a proportion of seasonal households to be allocated to the at least one geographic sub-regions;
• (e) utilizing at the seasonal build routine the set of geographic correspondences to incrementally allocate the seasonal households to at least one of the geographic sub-regions based on the calculated actual need;
• (f) merging at the merge routine the results of the steps of allocating the number of non-seasonal and seasonal households;
• and
• (g) allocating the seasonal and non-seasonal households to each of the sub-sub-regions within each sub-region.