Integrated Climate and Land-Use Scenarios (Iclus) V1.3 User’s Manual: Arcgis Tools and Datasets for Modeling US Housing Density Growth

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Abstract

As a part of the Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios (ICLUS) project, the Geographic Information System (GIS) tool can be used to generate scenarios of housing-density changes and calculate impervious surface cover for the conterminous United States. The ICLUS User’s Guide accompanies the tool. This product distributes the population projections and creates land use data described in the 2009 EPA report "Land-Use Scenarios: National-Scale Housing-Density Scenarios Consistent with Climate Change Storylines".

The ICLUS project developed scenarios of housing density for the continuous United States to 2100. These scenarios are broadly consistent with global-scale, peer-reviewed storylines of population growth and economic development, which are used by climate change modelers to develop projections of future climate. The scenarios were developed within a Geographic Information System (GIS). The user's guide, ICLUS v1.3 User’s Manual: ArcGIS Tools and Datasets for Modeling US Housing Density Growth, describes the GIS tools available to generate these scenarios.

The GIS tool allows users to:
  • customize housing density patterns by altering household size and travel time assumptions;
  • subset county-level population projections by age, ethnicity and gender; and
  • generate a map of estimated impervious surface based on a housing density map.
The data (available to download from this web site) consists of five population scenarios by county for the conterminous United States and are available in 5-year increments from 2000 to 2100. The population projections for each U.S. county drive the production of new housing units, which are allocated in response to the spatial pattern of previous growth (e.g., 1990 to 2000), transportation infrastructure, and other basic assumptions. The housing allocation model recomputes housing density in 5-year time steps at the resolution of 1 hectare (1 ha). Housing density is used to calculate impervious surface cover at the resolution of 1 km2.

Impact/Purpose

The GIS tool enables users to run SERGoM with the population projections developed for the ICLUS project and allows users to modify the spatial allocation housing density across the landscape.

Citation

U.S. EPA. Integrated Climate and Land-Use Scenarios (Iclus) V1.3 User’s Manual: Arcgis Tools and Datasets for Modeling US Housing Density Growth. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 2010.

History/Chronology

Date Description
01-Jan 2009EPA partners with USGS to develop a geoprocessing tool.
02-Jun 2009EPA released the related report, Land-Use Scenarios: National-Scale Housing-Density Scenarios Consistent with Climate Change Storylines (Final Report).
03-Nov 2009EPA released the ICLUS User's Manual and Tool (External Review Draft) for public review and comment. [Federal Register Dec 8, 2009]
04-Sep 2010EPA released ICLUS v1.3 and the final user's manual document.
05-May 2011EPA released ICLUS v1.3.1.
06-Jul 2013EPA released ICLUS v1.3.2.

This document has been reviewed in accordance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency policy and approved for publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.


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