A dynamic microsimulation model for epidemics.

A large evidence base demonstrates that the outcomes of COVID-19 and national and local interventions are not distributed equally across different communities. The need to inform policies and mitigation measures aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19 highlights the need to understand the complex links between our daily activities and COVID-19 transmission that reflect the characteristics of British society. As a result of a partnership between academic and private sector researchers, we introduce a novel data driven modelling framework together with a computationally efficient approach to running complex simulation models of this type. We demonstrate the power and spatial flexibility of the framework to assess the effects of different interventions in a case study where the effects of the first UK national lockdown are estimated for the county of Devon. Here we find that an earlier lockdown is estimated to result in a lower peak in COVID-19 cases and 47% fewer infections overall during the initial COVID-19 outbreak. The framework we outline here will be crucial in gaining a greater understanding of the effects of policy interventions in different areas and within different populations.

A new attribute-linked residential property price dataset for England and Wales, 2011-2019.

Current research on residential house price variation in the UK is limited by the lack of an open and comprehensive house price database that contains both transaction price alongside dwelling attributes such as size. This research outlines one approach which addresses this deficiency in England and Wales through combining transaction information from the official open Land Registry Price Paid Data (LR-PPD) and property size information from the official open Domestic Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). A four-stage data linkage is created to generate a new linked dataset, representing 79% of the full market sales in the LR-PPD. This new linked dataset offers greater flexibility for the exploration of house price (£/m2) variation in England and Wales at different scales over postcode units between 2011 and 2019. Open access linkage codes will allow for future updates beyond 2019.

A synthetic Longitudinal Study dataset for England and Wales.

This article describes the new synthetic England and Wales Longitudinal Study 'spine' dataset designed for teaching and experimentation purposes. In the United Kingdom, there exist three Census-based longitudinal micro-datasets, known collectively as the Longitudinal Studies. The England and Wales Longitudinal Study (LS) is a 1% sample of the population of England and Wales (around 500,000 individuals), linking individual person records from the 1971 to 2011 Censuses. The synthetic data presented contains a similar number of individuals to the original data and accurate longitudinal transitions between 2001 and 2011 for key demographic variables, but unlike the original data, is open access.

A new area classification for understanding internal migration in Britain.

This article details the development of a new area classification for Britain based on internal migration variables taken from the 2001 Census. An explanation of why general-purpose area classifications already in existence are not ideal for internal migration analysis is provided, before an account of the construction of the new classification is given. The latter involves justification of the choice of variables, explanation of the methodology adopted and presentation of the final typology.

Estimates of internal migration flows for the UK, 2000-2007.

Statistics on migration flows year by year within the UK are produced by the Office for National Statistics, the General Register Office for Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics Research Agency for migration within England and Wales, within Scotland and within Northern Ireland respectively. However, these flow statistics are not integrated across the UK. As there was a need for such integrated flow statistics at a sub-national scale known as NUTS2 for an EU sponsored project, the authors developed a synthetic estimate of migration flows for the calendar years 2000 to 2007 and the mid-year to midyear intervals 1999-2000 to 2006-07. The estimates were controlled by the migration flows published at NUTS1 scale from the UK wide NHS Central Register to which country specific flows between NUTS2 regions from the various patient registers were fitted. The gaps, flows between regions in different devolved territories, were filled by adjusting comprehensive flow data from the 2001 Census to the published NHSCR flows. Age detail was added only to the total out-migration and in-migration flows from each region using a fixed national profile of migration rates by age from the 2001 Census. The resulting time series of flow data provide, therefore, the three matrix faces of an origin-destination-age array for each time period. The paper describes the details of the estimation process and reports on some of the trends that the time series show.

Population turnover and churn: enhancing understanding of internal migration in Britain through measures of stability.

Net migration measures take account of the direction of migration flows, but our understanding of migration can be extended using population turnover and churn as measures of population stability. Turnover is a measure of the intensity of migration into and out of a district, whereas churn incorporates these flows and also includes the flows that take place within each district. Using districts of Britain and their type-based groupings, the highest levels of turnover and churn are found in London and some of the more dynamic urban areas, whereas the lowest levels are found in rural and previously industrial areas. Age has a significant effect on these measures with the population in their late teens and early twenties being the least stable and older populations being more stable.