A Multipurpose Model

DYNAMIS-POP is an extendable multipurpose model. In its current state it focuses on detailed demographic and education projections, and on health.

The model allows studying the impact of educational expansion on child mortality, immunization, age at first marriage, fertility, migration, urbanization and emigration. DYNAMIS-POP supports regional projections distinguishing three geographical levels. Projections include variables like school attendance by grade, education attainment, number and age of children, and ethnicity. As an education projection model, DYNAMIS-POP can be used for school infrastructure planning on a regional level. Tracking students through the education system by grade allows calculations like the number of required classrooms and teachers accounting for demographic change under alternative enrollment and retention scenarios. The model supports easy scenario creation including the setting of target policy goals like student to classroom and student to teacher ratios.

Another development direction of model applications concerns health issues and mortality. Currently the model focuses on infant mortality by mother’s characteristics like mothers age and education and on child vaccination based on mother’s characteristics, ethnicity, region and prenatal care.

DYNAMIS-POP can serve as a base for model extensions in various dimensions. DYNAMIS-POP is an interacting population model, as such it supports the modeling of linked lives (e.g. families, households), transmission processes (e.g. inter-generational transmission of ethnicity, education; transmission of diseases), and interactions between people and institutions (e.g. schools, hospitals) and the environment. In the medium term, this opens opportunities to develop the model to a tool supporting the projection and analysis of a wide range of processes of sustainable development and related indicators.